LIBRARY 

OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 
Clms  ^7  5"  5 


^p  |).  W.  -JSopntdu 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE,  AND  OTHER 
ESSAYS.     i2mo,  $1.25,  «f/.     Postage  extra. 

WASHINGTON  IRVING.  In  Riverside  Biographical 
Series.  With  Photogravure  Portrait.  i2mo,  65  cents, 
net;  postpaid,  71  cents.  School  Edition,  with  half- 
tone portraits,  50  cents,  net,  postpaid. 

A  READER'S  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA- 
TURE. By  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  and 
H.  W.  Boynton.  Illustrated.  Crown  8vo,  $1.25,  7tet, 
postpaid. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
Boston  and  New  York 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 


JOURNALISM    AND 
LITERATURE 


H.  W.  BOYNTON 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

^be  RiberisiDe  pre?]*,  CambciDfle 

1904 


COPYRIGHT    1904    BY    HENRY   W.    BQ-i-NTON 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  September,  IQ04 


To  J.  H.  B. 


Journalism  and  Literature 

PAOR 

1 

Owning  Books 

25 

The  Reading  Public      .... 

.      37 

Pace  in  Reading         .... 

65 

"  Effusions  of  Fancy  "          ... 

.      67 

American  Humor       .... 

85 

"  For  the  Young  " 

.     103 

Poetry  and  Commonplace 

121 

Poetry  as  Fine  Art       .... 

.     131 

Poetry  and  the  Stage 

.        .         143 

Literature  as  a  By-Product 

.     157 

Intlmate  Literature 

171 

Cleverness  and  Originality 

.     181 

The  Writing  Public 

199 

Reviewer  and  Critic     .... 

.    215 

JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 


JOURNALISM  AND   LITERATUEE 

It  is  a  pity  that  we  cannot  get  on  without  defi- 
nitions, but  there  is  too  much  convenience  in 
them,  too  much  safety.  They  accouter  us,  they 
marshal  us  the  way  that  we  are  gomg,  they 
help  us  along  the  difficult  middle  path  of  argu- 
ment, they  comfort  our  declining  periods.  Poor 
relations,  to  be  sure,  and  not  to  be  made  too 
much  of;  but,  at  least,  one  ought  not  to  be 
ashamed  of  them  in  company.  If  there  are  ab- 
stract terms  which  can  safely  be  employed  off- 
hand, the  terms  of  literary  criticism  are  not 
among  them.  What  wonder  ?  If  political  econo- 
mists find  it  hard  to  determine  the  meaning  of 
words  like  "  money  "  and  "  property,"  how  shall 
critics  agree  in  defining  such  imponderable  ob- 
jects as  genius,  art,  literature?  Is  literature 
broadly  "the  printed  word,"  the  whole  body  of 
recorded  speech  ?  Or  is  it  the  product  of  a  con- 
scious and  regulated,  but  not  inspired,  art  ?   Or 


4  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

is  it,  with  other  products  of  art,  due  to  that 
expression  of  personality  through  craftsmanship 
which  we  call  genius?  To  the  final  question  I 
should  say  yes ;  confessing  faith  in  personal  in- 
spiration as  the  essential  force  in  literature,  and 
in  the  relative  rather  than  absolute  character  of 
such  personal  inspiration,  or  genius.  I  think  of 
literature  not  as  ceasing  to  exist  beyond  the  con- 
fines of  poetry  and  belles-lettres,  but  as  embra- 
cing whatever  of  the  printed  word  presents,  in  any 
degree,  a  personal  interpretation  of  life.  What 
he  is  and  has,  —  some  touch  of  genius,  some 
property  of  wisdom,  some  hold  (however  partial 
and  unconscious)  upon  the  principles  of  literary 
art,  —  these  things  enable  a  writer  for  interpre- 
tative or  "  creative  "  work. 


From  this  point  of  view  journalism  has,  strictly, 
no  literary  aspect ;  it  has  certain  contacts  with 
literature,  and  that  is  all.  The  real  business  of 
journalism  is  to  record  or  to  comment,  not  to 
create  or  to  interpret.  In  its  exercise  of  the  re- 
cording function  it  is  a  useful  trade,  and  in  its 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  5 

commenting  office  it  takes  rank  as  a  profession ; 
but  it  is  never  an  art.  As  a  trade  it  may  apply 
rules,  as  a  profession  it  may  enforce  conventions  ; 
it  cannot  embody  principles  of  universal  truth 
and  beauty  as  art  embodies  them.  It  is  essen- 
tially impersonal,  in  spirit  and  in  method.  A 
journalist  cannot,  as  a  journalist,  speak  wholly 
for  himself ;  he  would  be  like  the  occasional  pri- 
vate citizen  who  nominates  himself  for  office.  A 
creator  of  literature  is  his  own  candidate,  his  own 
caucus,  his  own  argument,  and  his  own  elector. 
It  is  aut  CcBsar  aut  nullus  with  him,  as  with  the 
aspirant  in  any  other  form  of  art.  This  is  why 
an  unsuccessful  author  is  so  much  more  con- 
spicuous an  object  of  ridicule  than  other  failures. 
He  has  proposed  himself  for  a  sort  of  eminence, 
and  has  proved  to  be  no  better  than  a  Christian 
or  an  ordinary  man.  He  might,  perhaps,  have 
been  useful  in  some  more  practical  way,  —  for 
instance,  in  journalism,  which  offers  a  respectable 
maintenance,  at  least,  to  the  possessor  of  verbal 
talent.  Its  ex  parte  impersonality  affords  him  a 
surer  foothold  at  the  outset.  Pure  journalism  has 
no  need  of  genius ;  it  is  an  enterprise,  not  an 


6  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

emprise.  It  records  fact,  and  on  the  basis  of 
such  fact  utters  the  opinion  of  partisan  consen- 
sus, of  editorial  policy,  or,  at  its  point  of  nearest 
approach  to  literature,  of  individual  intelligence. 
But  it  happens  that  pure  journalism  is  hardly 
more  common  than  pure  literature.  The  "  spark 
of  genius  "  is,  one  must  think,  more  than  a  meta- 
phor. If  it  did  not  often  appear  in  writers  whose 
principal  conscious  effort  is  given  to  the  utiliza- 
tion of  talent,  there  would  be  no  question  of 
anything  more  than  contrast  between  Uterature 
and  journalism.  There  is  a  mood  in  which  the 
thoughtful  reader  or  writer  is  sure  to  sympathize 
with  a  favorite  speculation  of  the  late  Sir  Les- 
lie Stephen's.  "  I  rather  doubt,"  he  expressed 
it  at  the  very  end  of  his  busy  life,  "whether 
the  familiar  condemnation  of  mediocre  poetry 
should  not  be  extended  to  mediocrity  in  every 
branch  of  literature.  .  .  .  The  world  is  the  better, 
uo  doubt,  even  for  an  honest  crossing-sweeper. 
But  I  often  think  that  the  value  of  second-rate 
literature  is  —  not  small,  but  —  simply  zero.  .  .  . 
If  one  does  not  profess  to  be  a  genius,  is  it  not 
best  to  console  one's  self  with  the  doctrine  that 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  7 

silence  is  golden,  and  take,  if  possible,  to  the 
spade  or  the  pickaxe,  leaving  the  pen  to  one's 
betters?" 

One's  betters,  —  it  is,  after  all,  an  indefinite 
phrase.  Are  they  only  the  best?  Attempts  to 
establish  an  accurate  ranking  of  genius  have 
proved  idle  enough.  It  is  not  altogether  agreed 
whether  the  greatest  names  can  be  counted  on 
the  fingers  of  one  hand  or  of  two;  it  is  fairly 
well  understood  that  they  are  worth  all  the  other 
names  "  put  together."  But  does  it  follow  that 
all  the  other  names  are,  therefore,  worth  nothing  ? 
The  foothills  have  never  been  quite  put  to  shame 
by  the  loftiest  summits.  I  do  not  see  that  it  is 
altogether  admirable,  this  instinct  which  makes 
men  querulous  for  the  best.  One  may  be  reason- 
ably credidous  as  to  the  average  of  human  ability 
without  perceiving  anything  mediocre  in  the  next 
best,  or  in  the  next  to  that.  Surely  there  is 
nothing  trivial  in  the  employment  of  the  least 
creative  faculty,  if  it  does  not  interfere  with  more 
important  functions.  That  primum  mobile,  the 
question  of  the  major  utility,  is  an  ancient  battle- 
ground upon  which  we  shall  hardly  venture  to  set 


8  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

foot.  Here  are  still  fouglit  over  the  eternal  issues 
between  commerce  and  the  arts,  science  and  the 
classics,  the  practical  and  the  ideal.  It  is  for  us 
to  skirt  the  edge  of  conflict  with  the  admission 
that  a  great  talent  may  be  more  effective,  even 
more  permanently  effective,  than  a  small  genius; 
as  a  Jeffrey  has  proved  to  be  more  effective  than 
a  Samuel  Kogers.  It  is,  for  whatever  the  fact 
may  be  worth,  the  man  of  affairs,  the  man  of 
opinions,  rather  than  the  seer  or  the  poet,  who 
determines  what  the  next  step  of  the  infant 
world  shall  be. 

The  fact  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  career  yields  a 
sufficient  gloss  upon  the  letter  of  his  theory,  — 
if  theory  is  not  too  serious  a  word  for  his  half 
ironical  specidation.  He  had,  by  his  own  account, 
no  natural  impidse  toward  production  in  the 
forms  which  are  commonly  called  creative.  He 
was  prevented  from  becoming  a  poet  (as  he  ad- 
mits with  his  usual  engaging  frankness)  by  his 
inability  to  write  verse  ;  and  his  instinct  did  not 
lead  him  toward  imaginative  prose.  His  path  to 
literature  lay  through  a  superior  land  of  journal- 
ism.   Among  his  staff  colleagues  upon  the  "  Satur- 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  9 

day  Review,"  the  ''  Pall  Mali  Gazette,"  and  else- 
where, were  Mill,  Venables,  Mark  Pattison, 
Froude,  Freeman,  Thackeray,  and  John  Morley. 
He  does  not  think  too  highly  of  the  profession 
in  which  such  men  were,  at  least  temporarily, 
engaged.  He  records,  not  without  malice,  the 
fact  that  Jeffrey,  prince  among  journalists,  com- 
plained of  Carlyle's  being  "  so  desperately  in  earn- 
est." He  speaks  with  admiration  of  Carlyle's 
having  himself  been  successfid  in  resisting  "  the 
temptations  that  most  easily  beset  those  who  have 
to  make  a  living  by  the  trade."  He  permits  him- 
self an  ironical  comment  upon  Mill's  comparison 
of  the  modem  newspaper  press  and  the  Hebrew 
prophets.  "  There  are  not  many  modern  journal- 
ists," he  remarks  with  misleading  mildness,  "  who 
impress  one  by  their  likeness  to  a  Jeremiah  or  a 
John  the  Baptist.  The  man  who  comes  to  de- 
nounce the  world  is  not  likely  to  find  favor  mth 
the  class  which  hves  by  pleasing  it."  Finally,  he 
thinks  it  proper  to  say  yet  more  sharply,  "  To  be 
on  the  right  side  is  an  irrelevant  question  in  jour- 
nalism." Sir  Leshe's  personahty  was  not  of  the 
subduable  kind,  and  presently  found  its  proper 


10  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

expression  in  the  varied  labors  of  a  man  of  letters. 
His  journalistic  experience  could  be  only  a  tem- 
porary phase. 

II 

Those  who  have  approached  literature  through 
journalism  are  legion,  but  their  experience  has 
little  bearing  upon  our  present  theme.  More 
to  the  purpose  are  those  writers  of  power  whose 
permanent  and  absorbing  task  is  journalism,  but 
whose  work  is  so  sound  in  substance,  so  pure  in 
contour,  so  directly  informed  with  personality, 
as  to  outrank  in  literary  quality  the  product  of 
many  a  literary  workshop.  Such  writers  may 
have  been  capable  of  attaining  a  real,  though  not 
a  great  success  in  more  purely  literary  forms ;  yet 
their  achievement  leaves  us  no  room  for  regret. 
Their  business  has  been  to  record  and  to  estunate 
facts  and  conditions  of  the  moment ;  their  in- 
stinct has  led  them  to  offer  a  j)ersonal  interpreta- 
tion of  these  facts  and  conditions.  Our  only  cause 
of  embarrassment  lies  in  the  resultant  character 
of  the  given  product.  It  is  not  a  little  difficult  to 
reduce  to  a  category  such  writers  as  Christopher 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  11 

North,  Jeffrey,  Steevens,  or  Godldn.  Journalism 
is  concerned  with  immediate  phenomena.  Talent, 
for  its  empirical  method  of  dealing  with  the  data 
afforded  by  such  phenomena,  finds  a  safeguard  in 
the  impersonal  or  partisan  attitude  ;  it  is  enabled, 
at  least,  to  generalize  by  code  to  a  practical  end. 
A  journalist  whose  impersonal  talent,  let  us  say, 
is  imable  to  subdue  his  personal  genius,  feels  the 
inadequacy  of  this  method.  He  has  a  hankering 
for  self-expression.  He  is  dissatisfied  with  this 
hasty  summarizing  of  facts,  this  rapid  postulating 
of  inferences.  He  insensibly  extends  his  func- 
tion, reinforces  analysis  with  insight,  and  pro- 
duces literature.  He  has  not  been  able  to  confine 
himseK  to  telling  or  saying  something  appropriate 
to  the  moment ;  he  has  merely  taken  his  cue  from 
the  moment,  and  busied  himself  with  saying  what 
is  appropriate  to  himself  and  to  the  truth  as  he 
knows  it.  He  has,  in  short,  ceased  to  be  a  ma- 
chine or  a  mouthpiece,  and  become  a  "  creative  " 
writer. 

Of  course  the  same  thing  happens  in  other 
arts,  and  in  other  forms  of  the  printed  word.  In 
history,  in  private  or  public  correspondence,  in 


12  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

the  gravest  scientific  writing,  even,  one  often 
perceives  a  sort  of  literature  of  inadvertence,  a 
literature  in  effect,  though  not  in  primary  intent. 
There  is,  indeed,  no  form  of  writing  except  what 
baldly  records,  mechanically  compiles,  or  conven- 
tionally comments,  which  may  not  give  expression, 
however  incidental  or  imperfect,  to  personality,  to 
the  power  of  interpretation  as  contrasted  with  the 
power  of  communication. 

Ill 

To  examine,  however  cursorily,  the  two  func- 
tions of  pure  journalism,  is  to  observe  how  easily 
they  transform  into  the  literary  or  interpretative 
function.  It  Is  plain  that  little  distinction  can  be 
made  between  a  piece  of  journalism  and  a  piece 
of  literature  on  the  ground  of  external  subject- 
matter  alone.  A  squalid  slum  incident,  a  fashion- 
able wedding,  the  escape  of  a  prisoner,  the  detec- 
tion of  a  forgery,  may  afford  material  either  for 
journalism  or  for  the  literary  art.  In  one  in- 
stance the  product  will  be  interesting  as  news, 
in  the  other  as  It  bears  upon  some  universal 
principle  or  emotion  of  human  life.    So  it  not 


JOURNALISM  AND   LITERATURE  13 

seldom  happens  that  a  reporter  develops  extra- 
journalistic  skill  in  the  portrayal  of  experience  or 
character.  Writers  of  fiction  are  spawned  almost 
daily  by  the  humbler  press.  The  journalistic  use 
of  the  word  "  story  "  indicates  the  ease  of  a  trans- 
ition which  is  not  a  wandering  from  fact  to  fal- 
sity, but  an  upward  shift  from  the  plane  of  sunple 
registry  to  the  plane  of  interpretation.  Mr.  Kip- 
ling happens  to  be  the  most  conspicuous  modem 
instance  of  the  reporting  journalist  turned  story- 
writer.  It  seems  that  his  genius  has  led  him  to 
the  instinctive  development  of  an  art  based  upon 
principles  to  which  he  professes  a  certain  indiffer- 
ence. There  are  an  indefinite  number  of  ways  of 
inditing  tribal  lays,  he  assures  us,  and  every  sin- 
gle one  of  them  is  right.  The  speculation  has  its 
merits  as  a  tribute  to  personality ;  it  has  obvious 
demerits  in  seeming  to  lay  stress  upon  the  virtue 
of  mere  oddity  or  inventive  power.  Mr.  Kipling 
will  eventually  rank  with  a  class  of  writers  sepa- 
rated by  a  whole  limbo  from  the  greatest  creative 
spirits ;  one  need  not  in  the  least  grudge  them 
their  immediate  effectiveness.  Greater  writers 
than  Mr.  Kipling  have  been  skeptical  as  to  the 


14  JOURNALISM   AND   LITERATURE 

value  of  those  lesser  forms  of  art  which  suggest 
mere  artifice.  Carlyle  expressed  doubt  as  to  the 
permanent  effectiveness  of  what  the  Germans  call 
"  Kunst :  "  the  conscious  apphcation  of  artistic 
theories  or  methods  to  the  expression  of  truth. 
Indeed,  to  take  it  seriously  at  all,  one  must  take 
art  to  be  the  expression  of  a  personal  creative  fac- 
ulty as  distinguished  from  that  of  an  impersonal 
producing  faculty ;  the  result  of  a  true  conscious- 
ness of  principles,  not  a  mere  being  aware  of  them. 
So  far  as  a  record  of  immediate  events  manifests 
such  a  consciousness,  it  asserts  its  right  to  be  con- 
sidered not  as  journaHsm,  but  as  hterature. 

Nor,  further,  can  any  fortune  of  publication 
establish  a  distinction  of  quality  between  these 
two  forms  of  the  printed  word.  Not  long  ago  a 
popular  American  writer  ventured  so  far  as  to 
advance  the  theory  that  it  is  largely  a  matter  of 
luck  whether  a  given  bit  of  writing  will  turn  out 
to  be  literature  or  not ;  unless,  indeed,  the  act  of 
putting  it  within  cloth  covers  be  the  final  war- 
rant of  its  quality.  The  remark  was,  we  may 
suppose,  not  intended  to  be  taken  very  seriously. 
It  is  pathetically  true  that  the  quality  of  minor 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  15 

literatm-e  is  not  determined  by  the  accident  of  its 
disappearance  or  of  its  preservation  in  book  form. 
Fortimately,  the  research  of  special  students  and 
the  enthusiasm  of  amateur  explorers  succeed  in 
rescuing  much  of  desert  from  the  diluvial  flot- 
sam of  the  j)ast.  Much  is  undoubtedly  lost.  Its 
vitality  has  proved  insufficient,  overshadowed  in 
its  own  day,  perhaps,  by  superior  vitalities.  Such 
is  the  fate  also  of  canvases,  of  statues,  of  beautiful 
buildings.  Works  of  art  are  not  ephemeral  be- 
cause they  fail  to  live  forever ;  we  must  not  be 
imreasonable  in  demandmg  long  life  for  all  that 
deserves  the  name  of  literature.  Granted  that  the 
literature  of  the  newspaper  report  has  less  chance 
of  permanence  than  the  literature  of  the  maga- 
zine or  of  the  publisher's  venture :  it  nevertheless 
serves  its  purpose ;  and  perhaps  makes  itself  felt 
more  than  the  generality  suspect.  It  may  happen 
that  a  brief  sketch  of  some  apparently  trivial  scene 
or  incident,  printed  in  an  obscure  journal,  actually 
excels  in  pure  literary  quahty  the  more  elaborate 
structures  of  fiction,  with  aU  the  dignity  that  may 
attend  their  pubhcation,  whether  serially  or  be- 
tween covers  of  their  own. 


16  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

It  is  evident,  moreover,  that  our  definition  of 
journalism  applies  to  several  large  classes  of  books. 
There  are,  for  example,  books  on  exploration, 
physical  or  other ;  on  anthropological  or  sociolo- 
gical experiment;  books  recording  special  con- 
ditions, or  commenting  impersonally  on  special 
events,  of  the  day.  The  usefulness  of  such  books 
is  obvious  ;  they  could  not  weU  be  dispensed  with. 
Yet  it  is  only  in  the  hands  of  a  Carlyle  or  an 
Arnold  or  a  Ruskin  that  this  kind  of  material 
becomes  literature,  —  an  expression  of  universal 
truth  in  terms  of  present  fact.  Wherever  in  a 
journal  personality  emerges  and  fuUy  expresses 
itself,  literature  emerges.  Wherever  in  literary 
forms  the  occasional,  the  conventional,  the  parti- 
san, the  indecisive  personality,  are  felt,  journalism 
is  present. 

IV 

There  is  another  modification  of  the  recording 
function  which  has  assumed  great  importance  in 
the  popular  periodicals  of  the  day.  The  "  sj)ecial 
article "  represents  a  development,  rather  than 
a  transformation,  of  the  newspaper  report  as  it 


JOURNALISM   AND   LITERATURE  17 

deals  with  conditions.  A  description  of  proposed 
buildings  for  a  new  World's  Fair ;  a  sketch  of 
the  relations  between  Japan  and  Korea  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Russian  war ;  an  account  of 
recent  movements  in  municipal  or  national  poli- 
tics ;  a  study  of  a  commercial  trust :  with  such 
articles  our  magazines  are  filled.  They  are  a  legi- 
timate and  useful  product  of  journalism ;  one 
should  only  take  care  to  distinguish  them  from 
that  personal  creative  form,  the  essay.  The  pub- 
he  demand  for  such  work  has  given  birth  to  a 
new  race  of  special  reporters,  among  whom  the 
popular  idol  appears  to  be  that  picturesque  ad- 
venttirer,  the  war  correspondent.  Such  men  do 
excellent  service.  They  write  with  vivacity  and 
with  a  kind  of  individuality ;  but  their  work 
is  unlikely  to  possess  the  qualities  which  give 
permanence.  It  is  a  brilhant  hazard  of  de- 
scription and  comment;  it  does  all  that  talent 
and  special  aptitude  can  do  with  the  material  in 
hand.  Almost  inevitably,  it  lacks  the  repose,  the 
finality,  the  beauty,  which  may  eventually  belong 
to  a  personal  or  literary  treatment  of  the  same 
material.    This  is  true  even  of  the  product  of  so 


18  JOURNALISM   AND   LITERATURE 

vigorous  and  effective  a  writer  as  the  late  G.  W. 
Steevens.  He  was  somewhat  too  closely  involved 
in  the  condition  of  the  moment "  to  see  life  stead- 
ily and  to  see  it  whole."  Such  men  are  bound  to 
take  sides,  and  are  consequently  doomed  to  half 
express  themselves  in  wholly  uttering  a  point  of 
view  or  a  phase.  Their  work  will  possess  individual 
unction,  but  hardly  the  force  of  personal  inspira- 
tion. It  is  naturally  overestimated  by  the  public, 
which  is  convinced  that  talent  and  energy  rule 
the  world  now,  no  matter  what  may  be  true  in 
the  long  run ;  and  that  to  rule  the  world  now  is 
the  most  important  of  possible  achievements.  But, 
indeed,  the  value  of  such  work  is  not  small.  One 
cannot  doubt  that  it  is  more  meritorious  for  a 
person  of  moderate  ability  to  fling  himself  into 
the  press,  and  to  make  sure  of  doing  one  kind  of 
man's  work,  than  to  sit  down  in  a  corner  and 
murmur,  "  Go  to :  I  am  about  to  be  a  genius." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  most  great  writers  have  been 
active  in  affairs,  in  one  way  or  other.  "  The  Di- 
vine Comedy,"  "  Hamlet,"  "  Paradise  Lost," 
"  Faust,"  show  clear  traces  of  acti\dties  far  enough 
from  the  practice  of  letters.    Nevertheless,  Mil- 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  19 

ton's  criticism  of  life  is  to  be  found  in  his  poetry 
rather  than  in  his  controversial  prose,  and  Dante's 
in  his  celebration  of  Beatrice  rather  than  in  his 
recorded  services  to  Florence.  The  product  of 
such  energy  is  calculable,  the  influence  of  such 
genius  altogether  incalculable. 

Between  Hterature  and  "  the  higher  journal- 
ism "  the  partition  is  extremely  thin.  If  I  imder- 
stand  the  term,  the  higher  journalism  means  the 
fxmction  of  impersonal  comment  employed  at  its 
utmost  of  breadth  and  dignity.  It  gives  utterance 
to  individual  judgment  rather  than  personal  in- 
terpretation. It  aims  to  inform  and  to  convince 
rather  than  to  express.  It  displays  real  erudi- 
tion, it  urges  admirable  specifics,  it  produces, 
in  fact,  printed  lectures  on  practical  themes  ad- 
dressed to  the  practical  intelligence.  One  per- 
ceives a  close  analogy  between  the  functions  of  the 
higher  journalist  and  those  of  the  preacher,  the 
lawyer,  and  the  politician.  An  ex  parte  imper- 
sonality is  all  that  can  be  demanded  of  any  of 
them,  —  intellectual  independence  being  a  de- 
sirable asset,  but  the  thing  said  being  largely 
determined  by  a  policy,  a  creed,  a  precedent,  or 


20  JOURNALISM   AND  LITERATURE 

a  platform.  lu  any  of  tliese  professions  will  ap- 
pear from  time  to  time  the  literary  artist,  —  the 
man  escaping  from  preoccupation  with  specific 
methods  or  ends,  and  expressing  his  personality 
by  some  larger  interpretation  of  life.  Hence  come 
our  Newmans,  our  Burkes,  and  our  Macaulays. 

So  from  the  "  article "  of  higher  journalism 
literature  frequently  emerges.  The  given  compo- 
sition ceases  to  be  a  something  "  written  up " 
for  a  purpose,  and  becomes  a  something  written 
out  of  the  nature  of  a  man.  It  is  not  merely  an 
arrangement  of  data  and  opinions ;  it  stirs  with 
life,  it  reaches  toward  a  further  end  than  imme- 
diate utility.  Under  such  conditions  the  journal- 
ist does  honor  to  his  craft  by  proving  himself 
superior  to  it.  He  has  dedicated  his  powers  to  a 
practical  service ;  but  he  has  not  been  false  to  his 
duty  in  transcending  it. 

Nevertheless,  his  simple  duty  remains  the  same ; 
all  that  his  office  demands  of  him  is  official  speech. 
More  than  talent  and  conformity  belongs  to  the 
few  who  direct  the  course  of  journahsm ;  but  even 
their  admitted  powers  are  rather  for  administra- 
tion than  for  expression.    A  man  of  this  kind  is 


JOURNALISIM  AND  LITERATURE  21 

content  to  embody  a  tlieoiy  in  an  organ  or  a 
group  of  organs,  to  determine  an  editorial  policy, 
and  to  influence  public  opinion.  The  genius  of  a 
writer  like  Godkin  cannot  be  denied ;  it  still  pre- 
sides over  the  admirable  jom'nal  which  owes  its 
prestige  to  him.  But  it  was  a  genius  allied  with 
a  moral  sense  somewhat  too  readily  moved  to  in- 
dignation. His  was  a  singular  instance  of  the 
nature  which  prefers  the  ardor  of  prompt  ser- 
vice to  the  ardor  of  self-utterance.  His  work  lay, 
accordingly,  upon  the  border  regions  between 
literature  and  iournalism. 


There  seems  to  be  no  need  of  seriously  discuss- 
ing the  question  of  superiority  between  the  two 
forms  of  verbal  activity.  Creation  is  always  su- 
perior to  production,  but  that  is  not  a  fact  which 
ought  to  trouble  honest  producers.  A  journal- 
ist is  contemptible  only  when  by  some  falsetto 
method  he  attempts  to  lead  the  i^ublic  into  fan- 
cying that  it  is  getting  literature  of  him.  Other- 
wise he  deserves  no  more  than  the  la^vyer  or  the 
clergyman  to  be  held  in  disesteem  by  men  of 


22  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE 

letters.  Some  discredit  has  doubtless  been  cast 
upon  the  profession  by  the  existence  of  that  for- 
lorn army  of  writers  who  would  have  liked  to 
illumine  the  world,  but  have  to  make  the  best  of 
amusing  it,  or  even  to  put  up  with  providing  it 
with  information.  Since  journalism  is  a  trade,  a 
person  of  reasonable  endowment  may  have  better 
hope  of  achieving  moderate  success  in  it  than  in 
literature.  But  one  does  not  fit  himself  for  jour- 
nalism by  failing  in  literature,  any  more  than 
one  fits  himself  for  literature  by  failing  in  jour- 
nalism. To  have  one's  weak  verse  or  tolerable 
fiction  printed  in  a  newspaper  does  not  make  one 
a  journalist ;  nor  does  it  turn  the  newspaper  into 
a  literary  publication.  Literary  graces !  There 
are  few  articles  so  unpromising  of  any  good,  in 
the  great  journalistic  department  shop  on  which 
the  numerical  world  now  depends  for  most  of  its 
wants. 

The  popularity  of  journalism  in  America  has, 
we  are  to  note  elsewhere,  reacted  upon  most  of 
our  magazines  so  strongly  that  they  are  distin- 
guished from  the  better  daily  journals  by  exclu- 
sion of  detail  and  modification  of  method  rather 


JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE  23 

than  by  essential  contrast  in  quality.  Upon  the 
character  of  the  daily  press,  that  is,  depends  the 
character  of  our  entire  periodical  product ;  and 
this  means,  in  large  measure,  the  character  of 
the  public  taste.  To  afford  a  vast  miscellaneous 
population  like  ours  its  only  chance  of  contact 
with  literature  entails  a  responsibility  which  may 
well  appall  even  the  ready  and  intrepid  cham- 
pions of  the  daily  press.  While,  however,  the 
night-fear  of  the  yellow  journal  is  disturbing 
enough  to  those  who  watch  for  the  morning,  they 
will  have  pleasanter  visions,  even  now  not  alto- 
gether unrealized,  of  a  journalism  more  respon- 
sible, more  just,  more  firmly  pursuant  of  that  fine 
enthusiasm  for  absolute  fitness,  for  the  steady  ap- 
plication of  worthy  means  to  worthy  ends,  which 
is  the  birthright  of  literature. 


OWNING  BOOKS 


OWNING   BOOKS 

It  may  be  only  an  obstinate  fancy  of  mine  that 
the  private  library  is  a  less  important  factor  in 
every-day  life  than  it  used  to  be.  The  laudator 
temjjoris  acti  is  seldom  aware  of  his  sentimental 
bias  ;  he  imagines  himself  to  be  traveling-  by  the 
sun,  when  it  is  the  moon  over  his  left  shoulder 
that  he  is  assiduously  ogling.  He  may  in  this  in- 
stance cite  the  authority  of  a  number  of  sensible 
persons  who  civilly  Avinced  when  prodded  with  the 
theory  in  point ;  but  this  may  have  been  due  to 
mere  civility,  that  easiest  and  most  effective  of 
retorts. 

It  seems  to  be  true  that  most  good,  intelligent 
middle-class  persons  are  quite  indifferent  to  the 
ownership  of  books.  They  would  not  precisely  go 
out  of  their  way  to  avoid  a  book.  If  you  are 
absent-minded  enough  to  send  them  a  Christmas 
volume,  they  will  thank  you  as  conscientiously  as 
if  you  had  forwarded  the  annual  symbol  in  ster- 


28  OWNING  BOOKS 

ling  silver.  The  household  will  have  its  case  or 
two,  of  course,  and  there  will  be  some  good  books 
on  the  shelves  :  the  Shakespeare  and  the  Milton ; 
Scott,  Thackeray,  a  few  one-volume  poets,  pos- 
sibly an  odd  volume  or  two  of  essays ;  the  germ, 
in  short,  of  a  good  family  library.  It  has  not 
much  chance  of  developing,  or  even  of  continu- 
ing to  live,  for  about  it  gathers  an  inorganic 
accretion  of  odds  and  ends  in  print :  a  silt  of 
school-texts,  children's  books,  whether  of  the  Elsie 
or  the  post-Elsie  type,  stray  magazines,  fustian 
romances,  and  other  flotsam  of  the  press.  A  real 
library  is  nothing  if  not  animate ;  it  either  lives 
or  dies,  either  grows  or  decays. 

That  ingenious  commentator,  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang,  not  long  ago  laid  the  decrease  of  serious 
reading  during  the  past  century  to  the  undue 
toothsomeness  of  Scott's  romances.  The  taste 
first  legitimately  pleased  soon  learned  to  put  up 
with  an  inferior  order  of  tickling.  Eomantic 
comfits  and  the  literary  cigarette  (also  paper- 
bound)  have  subsequently  made  the  solid  joint 
of  our  grandfathers  gross  and  flavorless  to  the 
popular  taste.    The  man  who  a  generation  or  two 


OWNING  BOOKS  29 

ago  would  not  have  shrunk  from  a  little  serious 
reading  is  now  content  with  the  effortless  ab- 
sorption of  journalistic  and  semi-journalistic 
ephemera.  It  is  considered  a  compliment  to  say 
of  so-and-so  that  he  "  keeps  up  with  the  books  of 
the  day."  If  he  reads  the  current  picture-book 
magazines,  using  the  text  as  a  gloss  to  the  illustra- 
tions, and  allows  no  one  to  ask  twice  if  he  has  read 
"  Obed  Hannmn,"  or  "  The  Scarlet  Princess,"  he 
passes  for  a  reading  man,  not  to  say  a  well-read 
man.  As  he  grows  rich  he  buys  horses,  furniture, 
plate  —  anything  but  books.  Possibly  he  comes 
at  last  even  to  that  extravagance,  and  purchases 
a  library  complete,  in  uniform  bindings.  The 
books  no  more  belong  to  him  than  they  did  in  the 
book-shop ;  he  is  as  far  as  ever  from  being  the 
real  owner  of  a  private  collection  of  books. 

To  buy  a  few  good  books,  and  presently  to  buy 
a  few  more :  there  are  no  other  rules  for  the  lay 
collector,  and  even  these  must  be  applied  very 
flexibly.  The  best  hundred  books  or  the  best 
thousand  are  not  to  be  determined,  even  approx- 
imately, by  any  man  or  assortment  of  men.  One 
does  not  make  friends  by  code,  but  by  chance 


30  OWNING  BOOKS 

and  choice.  With  books  the  field  of  choice  is  far 
less  confined,  and  the  element  of  chance  com- 
paratively slight.  My  friends  I  cannot  select 
from  the  number  of  good  people  who  have  lived 
and  proved  themselves  worthy  of  friendship. 
Nor,  to  be  sure,  can  I  know  Shakespeare  as  Ben 
Jonson  did ;  but  I  can  loiow  him  as  Lamb  did, 
or  Keats,  or  Fitzgerald  —  or  it  is  my  fault. 

There  are  many  persons,  some  of  them  intelli- 
gent, who  do  not  care  for  Shakespeare ;  they 
would  not  value  his  companionship.  Fortunately, 
there  are  plenty  of  other  good  books  for  them ; 
indeed,  better  books  for  them,  since  it  is  the  books 
one  loves  that  count.  That  his  books  should  be 
good  of  their  kind,  and  that  their  kind  should  be 
congenial  and  respectable,  is  all,  I  am  sure,  that 
the  reader  can  demand  of  himself,  so  far  as  the 
quality  of  his  library  is  concerned.  But  these 
good  books  must  be  continually  gathering  to 
themselves  other  good  books  —  perhaps  the  more 
gradually  the  better.  A  person  of  fair  general 
intelligence  will  account  complacently  for  his  fail- 
ure to  increase  his  scanty  store,  on  the  ground 
that  he  " hasn't  read  all  the  books  he  owns  yet." 


OWNING  BOOKS  31. 

He  never  will ;  not  that  he  ever  ought  to,  neces- 
sarily. Much  as  I  love  the  books  which  have  been 
the  companions  of  years,  they  lose  value  sensibly 
in  my  eyes  if  I  let  a  month  or  two  go  by  with- 
out adding  to  their  number.  A  new  book  on  the 
shelves,  read  or  unread,  sends  me  back  with  a 
keener  zest  to  the  old  favorites. 

But  of  course  no  sensible  man  would  care  at 
any  time  to  have  read  all  the  books  he  owns. 
A  book  may  be  profitable  and  companionable, 
though  you  know  very  little  of  its  contents.  Like 
Lumpkin,  you  pause  at  the  title,  though  you 
woidd  admit  that  between  the  covers  presum- 
ably lies  the  cream  of  the  correspondence.  You 
have  never  yet  found  yourself  in  just  the  mood 
for  that  book.  Yet  you  know  that  it  is  there, 
that  it  has  given  deep  pleasure  to  others,  and  that 
probably  some  day,  after  due  patience  on  both 
sides,  the  actual  acquaintance  will  come  about. 
The  volume  will  have  a  different  feeling  as  you 
take  it  from  the  shelf  ;  and  at  the  first  touch 
of  eye  you  will  recognize  a  friend.  After  all,  the 
public  hankering  for  books  of  amusement  is  only 
one  remove  from  the  rijrht  motive  of  the  reader. 


32  OWNING  BOOKS 

He  ought  to  read  for  pleasure,  and  amusement  is 
pleasure's  holiday  garb.  Nevertheless,  it  is  the 
secular  business  of  living  which  yields  the  most 
enduring  satisfactions.  The  book  that  cannot  be 
lived  with  and  made  a  companion  of  is  not  the 
book  one  cares  to  own.  Cap  and  bells  jingle  for 
a  moment  pleasantly  enough,  but  heaven  cure  the 
mind  for  which  motley  is  the  only  wear. 

Another  common  excuse  of  my  persistently 
bookless  friend  lies  in  the  existence  of  the  public 
library.  There  are  certain  unhappy  persons  in 
every  community  who  reaUy  are  obliged  to  make 
the  public  library  perform,  after  a  fashion,  the 
function  which  should  be  taken  care  of  at  home. 
They  are,  however,  fewer  and  far  less  pitiable 
than  the  well-to-do  persons  who  encourage  each 
other  in  the  notion  that  it  is  virtuous  for  any- 
body to  depend  upon  the  public  library  for  any- 
thing. 

The  public  library  is  at  best  a  cold  and  imper- 
sonal affair ;  so  great  in  bulk  and  so  shadowy  in 
outline  that  one  might  as  easily  make  friends 
with  Milton's  Satan  or  the  giant  in  "  Hop-o'-my- 
Thumb."   The  public  library  is  an  excellent  place 


OWNING  BOOKS  33 

for  grubbing  among  card-catalogues  and  books  of 
reference.  It  is  the  place  where  one  naturally 
consults  authorities  and  sources,  and  where,  more- 
over, it  is  possible  to  get  a  glimpse  of  rare  or  ex- 
pensive books  which  are  too  much  to  the  purse 
or  too  little  to  the  taste  for  private  ownership. 
But  it  is  not  the  place  to  choose  for  the  intimate 
process  to  which  the  much-abused  term  "read- 
ing "  ought  to  apply,  any  more  than  a  great  de- 
partment store  is  a  fit  place  to  meet  friends  in. 

And  what  is  to  be  said  of  the  mammoth  circu- 
lating library,  an  institution  so  long  popular  in 
England  and  so  recently  established  upon  any 
considerable  scale  in  this  country  ?  Of  the  Book- 
lovers  Library,  with  its  elaborately  advertised 
lack  of  the  need  of  advertising,  and  its  flattering 
but  amenable  protestations  of  exclusiveness  ?  Of 
the  Tabard  Inn,  hardly  less  high  and  mighty  or 
less  widely  patronized  ?  Or  of  the  People's  Li- 
brary, with  its  patent  swapping  drug-shop  sys- 
tem, by  which  the  pleased  patron  is  actiially  en- 
abled to  eat  his  cake  and  have  it  too,  without  re- 
course even  to  the  familiar  ceremony  of  the  slot  ? 
Certainly  it  woidd  not  be  fair  to  condemn  these 


34  OWNING  BOOKS 

systems  on  general  principles.  I  doubt  if  they 
have  much  influence  upon  the  buying  of  good 
books  for  private  ownership,  unless  indirectly  as 
they  cater  to  the  crude  public  taste  for  novelties 
in  print.  There  are  some  people  who  have  never 
bought  anything  but  current  books  and  have  now 
stopped  buying  those.  If  the  circulating  library 
is  responsible  for  this  change  I  do  not  know  that 
it  greatly  matters.  For  the  chances  are  a  thou- 
sand to  one  that  the  current  book  will  gain  no 
permanent  place  of  value  in  the  home  library  of 
such  a  reader.  Probably  the  worst  and  the  best 
that  can  be  said  of  the  circulating  library  as  a 
force  for  culture  is  that  it  is  neutral.  No  reader's 
soul  is  likely  to  be  lost  or  saved  by  the  weekly 
advent  of  four  clean  books  in  a  red  box. 

For  it  is  only  in  the  delicate  privacy  of  home, 
and  under  the  slow  ripening  of  acquaintanceship 
into  intimacy,  that  books  become  most  lovable, 
and  therefore  most  j)rofitable.  Nobody  who  has 
really  had  this  ex|Derience  of  naturally  acquired 
companionship  can  think  of  his  library  as  an  as- 
sortment of  tools  or  a  bazaar  of  toys.  It  has  be- 
come, on  the  contrary,  a  congenial  society,  the 


OWNING  BOOKS  35 

best  in  the  world ;  a  society  in  which  he  has  the 
right  to  move  with  a  freedom  bounded  only  l)y 
those  simple  courtesies  which  friends  require  of 
themselves  and  of  each  other. 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 


THE  EEADING  PUBLIC 

To  speak  accurately,  I  suppose  there  is  no  such 
body  literate  as  The  Reading  Public.  It  would 
have  existed,  if  ever,  at  the  golden  moment  when 
the  Average  Man  walked  abroad  in  the  flesh,  and 
the  Typical  Character  could  be  depended  on  to 
perform  by  the  card.  These  general  terms  are  a 
great  convenience  to  us,  but  they  are  also  capable 
of  becoming  a  great  nuisance.  They  need  to  be 
properly  kept  under.  They  are  inclined  to  push 
into  places  which  belong  to  specific  terms,  and 
we  are  often  thoughtless  enough  to  make  them 
welcome  there.  This  can  be  managed  with  a  good 
deal  of  safety;  for  no  odium  attaches  to  one's 
sponsorship  of  such  altogether  presentable  inter- 
lopers. "The  reading  public  has  again  manifested 
its  crass  ignorance  by  neglecting  Mr. 's  re- 
markable study  of  *  The  Psychology  of  Tennyson's 
Prose.' "  "  The  reading  public  has  set  its  seal 
of  approval  on  the  admirable  metrical  romance 


40  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

of  Sir ."  So  the  reviewer  will  plea- 
santly express  himself.  Perhaps  his  remark  may 
be  based  upon  the  nmnber  of  copies  sold ;  or 
he  may  really  be  thinking  something  like  this : 
"  Those  stupid  and  inadequately  informed  Joneses 
next  door  have  again  manifested,"  etc. ;  or  "  That 
reliable  critic,  Judge  Robinson,  has  set  his  seal 
of  approval,"  etc.,  etc.  —  a  method  of  saying  the 
thing  at  once  less  impressive  and  more  actionable. 
The  fact  is,  the  true-born  American  has  a  con- 
viction of  his  inalienable  right  to  define  and  in- 
terpret as  he  pleases.  There  is  an  inner  sense 
of  the  reliability  of  his  private  judgment  which 
comfortably  informs  him  when  the  voice  of  other 
people  is  the  voice  of  Heaven  and  when  it  is  not. 
Perhaps  the  phrase  in  question  is  used  more 
vaguely  than  others  of  the  sort.  "  The  music 
public"  and  "the  art  public"  are  expressions 
which  seem  to  have  retained  a  fairly  distinct 
meaning  of  exclusion,  of  special  taste.  They  do 
not  profess  to  include  everybody  who  can  stand 
a  time  upon  a  pianola,  or  live  without  incon- 
venience in  the  same  house  with  a  photogTavure. 
"  The  reading  public,"  on  the  other  hand,  may 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  41 

mcau  almost  anything  or  almost  nothing.  Doubt- 
less it  came  nearest  to  signifying  something  in 
particular  before  The  Public  learned  to  read.  Only 
a  few  generations  ago,  books  which  had  preten- 
sions to  a  recognized  literary  quahty  continued  to 
address  themselves  to  a  recognized  class  of  read- 
ers. The  audience  for  which  Dryden  and  Pope 
and  Johnson  and  Goldsmith  wrote  was  a  "  polite  " 
class.  It  could  be  counted  upon  to  encourage 
serious  attempts  in  any  of  the  established  forms 
of  polite  letters.  Poetry  and  the  essay  were  still 
in  the  ascendant ;  but  fiction  was,  though  reluc- 
tantly, comuig  to  be  admitted  as  a  form  in  which 
the  creative  impulse  might  conceivably  find  ex- 
pression. There  was  no  classical  precedent  for  it, 
no  Muse  to  look  after  it,  even  ;  "  story  "  had  not 
yet  been  lopped  away  from  "  history."  Yet  the 
novel  was  unmistakably  annoimcing  its  right  to 
existence  as  a  timely  and  indigenous  literary 
mode.  It  was,  in  fact,  to  be  a  principal  cause  of 
the  dwintUing  of  the  old  reading  public.  There 
is  still  a  small  remnant  of  that  public,  at  least  in 
England,  where  the  influence  of  the  classics  is 
yet  great,  and  where  every  institution  has  nine 


42  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

lives ;  but  it  is  no  longer  The  Reading  Public. 
Nevertheless,  among  the  numerous  constituencies 
which  make  up  the  modern  reading  world,  it  has 
only  one  superior  and  no  equals. 

We  cannot  here  attempt  a  classification  of 
these  constituencies.  It  must  serve  our  purpose 
to  suggest  a  few  classes  of  Americans  who  read 
for  other  than  practical  ends.  There  are  various 
classes  which  read  for  profit ;  not  only  the  seek- 
ers for  information  and  opinion  to  whom  journal- 
ism ministers,  but  those  who  read  for  moral  or 
religious  edification,  those  who  merely  study 
books  (a  process  which  lays  an  excellent  founda- 
tion for  reading,  but  is  very  different  in  itself), 
and  those  who  read  "  standard "  works  from  a 
sense  of  duty.  It  goes  without  saying  that  the 
ranks  of  those  who  read  for  pleasure  are  fre- 
quently recruited  from  all  of  these  classes.  In 
esse,  however,  they  are  inconsiderable  from  the 
2)oint  of  view  of  pure  literature,  and  this  is  the 
point  of  view  from  which  we  are  taking  our  casual 
observations. 

Special  conditions  in  America  have  brought 
about  a  greater  confusion  in  matters  of  taste  than 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  43 

exists  in  England.  We  hardly  produce  more 
Iduds  of  printed  matter,  but  we  are  less  certain 
of  what  it  all  amounts  to.  The  mere  heaping  up 
of  books  does  not  change  standards  ;  it  has,  how- 
ever, a  tendency  to  confuse  the  general  apprehen- 
sion of  them.  We  have  never  been  oversure  of 
them.  Our  academic  literary  class,  with  a  taste 
founded  upon  classical  learning,  was  always 
small;  it  could  not  expect  to  hold  its  propor- 
tion to  the  rapidly  increasing  total  of  American 
readers.  Unfortimately,  neither  popular  educa- 
tion nor  journalism  nor  any  development  of  the 
democratic  idea  has  been  able  to  substitute  a 
broader  or  sounder  theory  of  taste.  Indeed,  the 
tendency  has  been  away  from  any  theory.  Our 
doctrine  of  every  man  his  own  authority  has  not 
restricted  itself  to  the  conduct  of  affairs,  public 
or  private ;  if  it  has  not  quite  brought  us  to  the 
point  of  anarchy  as  regards  the  humane  arts,  we 
have  our  sense  of  humor  to  thank  for  stopping  us 
on  the  brink.  No  theory  or  practice  of  democracy 
has  ever  been  able  to  change  the  law  by  which 
nature  sets  a  numerical  limit  upon  superior 
classes.    Our   slight   prescription   of  literacy  in 


44  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

connection  with  the  franchise  sets  a  standard  of 
acquisition  which  the  public  schools  are  more 
than  able  to  meet.  But  while  compulsory  common- 
schooling  has  immensely  increased  the  number  of 
persons  who  are  able  to  decipher  Roman  type, 
probably  no  country  has  contained  so  few  persons 
in  proportion  to  the  sum  of  nominal  literacy 
who  have  any  understanding  of  what  the  canons 
of  good  literature  amount  to.  Ignorance  may  be 
bliss,  but  we  do  not  exactly  profess  to  make  it 
the  basis  of  our  national  happiness.  We  prefer 
the  foundation  of  a  little  learning ;  in  no  respect 
a  more  dangerous  thing  than  in  its  habit  of  giving 
the  little  learner  a  false  sense  of  security  in  mat- 
ters of  judgment.  There  are  a  glorious  handful 
who,  touching  a  hasty  lip  to  that  heady  brew, 
are  miraculously  endowed  with  new  vision,  and 
cannot  thereafter  go  far  wrong.  But  to  most  of 
us  taste  will  be  a  slow  achievement  toward  which 
every  sort  of  aid  must  be  given  by  circumstance. 
"  Shakespeare  ?  Oh,  yes,  we  '  had '  that  at 
school." —  "  Literature  ?  Sure !  we '  took '  it  senior 
year ;  it  had  a  green  cover."  So  speaks  the  honest 
citizen  who  must  be  admitted  to  represent  a  con- 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  45 

siderable  class.  Endowed  with  an  acute  and 
practical  intelligence,  he  passed  through  gi-ammar 
and  high  school  with  credit,  but  without  getting 
the  least  inkling  as  to  what  the  enjoyment  of  lit- 
erature means.  He  is  a  useful  man  in  the  com- 
munity. You  may  trust  his  opinion,  upon  any 
practical  matter  at  least,  as  well  as  your  own. 
He  was  "  up  "  for  the  school  board  last  year.  He 
reads  the  newspapers  faithfully,  and  is  inclined 
to  think  that  the  "  Spectator "  column  is  prob- 
ably literature,  because  he  cannot  quite  make  it 
out.  Perhaps  he  is  right  as  to  the  fact,  for  the 
modern  newspaper  is  not  an  aiffair  of  pure  jour- 
nalism. It  contains  not  only  news  and  talk  about 
news,  but  here  and  there  a  true  touch  of  litera- 
ture ;  some  little  picture  of  life  not  only  as  it  is, 
but  as  it  was  and  shall  be ;  some  record  of  essen- 
tial and  permanent  emotion.  Thousands  of  per- 
sons find  their  only  contact  with  literature  in  the 
newspaper.  Even  the  honest  citizen,  though  he 
turns  to  his  sheet  for  news,  for  items  of  general 
information,  or  for  practical  opinion,  can  hardly 
fail  to  be  aware  of  the  shadow,  at  least,  of  a 
more  gracious  presence.    His  household  probably 


46  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

boasts  one  member  who  is  fondly  asserted  to  be 
"a  great  band  to  read;"  who,  in  fact,  takes 
some  kind  of  interest  in  printed  matter  to  which 
the  rest  of  the  family  is  respectfully  unrespon- 
sive. It  may  be  the  last,  and  flimsiest,  historical 
romance,  but  how  is  the  household  to  know  that  ? 
Is  n't  it  advertised  in  the  trolleys,  and  did  n't  the 
"  Daily  Megaphone "  pronounce  it  the  book  of 
the  year?  And  Mary  likes  it,  and  Mary  is  a 
great  hand  to  read.  The  case  of  the  honest  citi- 
zen is  not  quite  hopeless,  even  from  the  literary 
point  of  view,  for  he  suspects  the  existence  of  a 
pleasure  which  is  too  fine  for  him. 

The  largest  of  our  reading  constituency  is 
composed  of  persons  who  read  for  the  fun  of  the 
moment  and  can  imagine  nothing  better  to  read 
for.  It  looks  upon  books  as  a  sort  of  cheap  sub- 
stitute for  the  cheap  theater,  and  expects  of  a 
novel  very  much  what  it  would  expect  of  a 
clever  vaudeville  turn.  It  is  a  news-stand  con- 
stituency, singularly  susceptible  to  posters,  and 
easily  unmanned  by  the  bellowing  of  train-boys. 
In  its  younger  generation,  with  the  fry  of  better 
classes,  it   feeds   avidly  upon   the   dime   novel. 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  47 

Later  it  makes  some  figm-e  at  the  public  libraries, 
and  ill  its  solvent  moments  helps  support  Book- 
likers'  Inns,  and  does  not  a  httle  toward  deter- 
mining what  the  "  best-selling  book  of  the  month  " 
shall  be.  It  does  not  care  in  the  least  whether 
what  it  reads  is  literatm-e  or  not. 

The  honest  citizen's  Mary,  let  us  suppose,  be- 
longs to  a  class,  mainly  feminine,  which  cares, 
but  does  not  know.  She  has  had  much  the  same 
schooling  as  her  father,  but  she  is  naturally  im- 
pressionable, and  could  not  remain  unmoved  in 
the  presence  of  Scott.  "  The  Lady  of  the  Lake  " 
had  barely  converted  her  to  poetry  when  "  Guy 
Mannering  "  determined  her  fate  as  a  reader  of 
romance.  She  has,  therefore,  not  only  "  taken  " 
literature,  she  has  been  inoculated  with  it ;  it 
has,  though  mildly,  "taken."  She  can  never 
again  be  quite  indififerent  to  the  idea  of  it.  The 
act  of  reading  will  continue  to  have  a  ritual  sig- 
nificance for  her,  and  though  it  may  often  be  a 
tawdry  shrine  at  which  she  worships,  it  is  better 
than  none.  She  hath  done  what  she  could;  she 
faithfully  expresses  her  endowment  and  training: 
so  far  she  proves  her  kmship  to  the  honest  citi- 


48  THE   READING  PUBLIC 

zen.  A  great  deal  is  written  for  her,  and  a  great 
deal  which  is  written  for  higher  audiences  finds 
in  her  approbation  a  comfortable  limbo.  The 
secret  of  her  weakness  is  that  she  is  theoretically- 
aware  of  a  distinction  between  amusement  and 
pleasure,  but  has  no  actual  feeling  for  it.  In 
school  she  was  under  some  guidance;  matters 
were  judged  for  her  which  she  could  not  hope  to 
determine  alone ;  and  she  felt  a  general  confi- 
dence that  she  was  being  guided  rightly.  Once 
left  to  herself,  aware  of  some  great  vague  back- 
ground of  "  classical "  or  "  standard  "  literature, 
she  may  have  tried  a  little  furtive  groping  among 
public  library  catalogues.  In  the  end  it  would 
prove  easier  to  read  the  new  books  which,  the 
newspaper  notices  inform  her,  are  all  master- 
pieces. Of  course  this  means  the  new  novels; 
for  not  only  is  fiction  the  one  form  of  literary 
art  which  appeals  to  all  classes  of  modern  read- 
ers, to  many  of  them  it  is  the  literary  art.  We 
need  not  hesitate,  therefore,  to  make  it  the  basis 
of  our  little  comparison. 

There  are  very  many  estates  in  the  novel-read- 
ing world,  and  some  of   the  least  conspicuous 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  49 

ones  are  among  the  most  interesting.  Here,  for 
instance,  is  a  constituency  numbering  tens,  per- 
haps hundi-eds,  of  thousands  which  peruses  the 
evangelical  novel.  It  cannot  persuade  itself  far 
enough  away  from  the  Scriptures  to  taste  of  con- 
fessedly secular  fiction ;  but  it  can  thi-ow  itself 
with  light  heart  and  clear  conscience  into  the 
pursuit  of  a  sensational  fiction  which  deals  with 
themes  sufficiently  blasphemous.  Here  again  is  a 
pubhc  which  harbors  a  suspicion  that  genuine  Kt- 
erary  persons  do  not  regard  fiction  as  quite  the 
goal  of  literary  effort.  It  is  given  to  explaining 
hurriedly,  when  caught  red-handed,  that  it  is  not 
reading  much  of  anything  —  only  a  novel.  It 
has  an  instinct  now  and  then  to  brush  up  on 
something  "  standard  "  —  say,  "  Paradise  Lost," 
or  Burke's  "  Speech  on  Conciliation."  Noblesse 
ohlige  —  it  can  still  recall  the  opening  lines  of 
Caesar.  It  keeps  on  shamefacedly  reading  nothing 
but  novels. 

Less  diverting,  but  equally  numerous,  is  the 
class  which,  possessing  some  acquaintance  with 
a  theory  of  taste,  deliberately  chooses  to  disre- 
gard its  practice.    This  is  an  insubordinate  class, 


50  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

largely  masculine,  and  jealous  of  any  appearance 
of  restraint  or  convention.  It  insists  upon  being 
repelled  by  everything  which  authority  has  pro- 
nounced to  be  admirable.  Shakespeare  must  be 
duU,  or  dull  persons  would  not  recommend  him. 

The  " Review  "  must  be  nonsense,  for  only 

idiots  could  imaginably  spend  their  time  talkmg 
about  other  people's  books.  Down  with  the  ped- 
ants !  farther  down  with  the  critics !  and  here 's 
to  the  good  fellow  who  reads  what  he  pleases ! 
It  cannot  be  said  that  he  has  much  better  luck 
in  his  choice  than  the  others  of  whom  we  have 
been  speaking.  Nor  has  that  numerous  group  of 
readers  (there  are  many  college-bred  men  among 
them)  who  know  what  is  superior,  who  have  a 
natural  aptitude  for  it,  but  who  are,  according  to 
their  account,  too  much  exhausted  by  business  or 
professional  cares  to  have  strength  left  for  any- 
thing but  what  is  inferior.  This  group  has  an 
exact  parallel  in  the  class  of  formally  educated 
theater-goers  who,  with  serious  drama  at  their 
disposal,  prefer  the  nonsense  of  "musical  com- 
edy," as  the  favorite  form  of  vaudeville  is  now 
called.  There  is  no  reply  to  be  made  to  the  argu- 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  51 

ment  wliich  these  persons  urge.  It  need  only  be 
said  that  when  a  man  has  left  liimseK  no  strength 
for  rational  enjoyment,  he  has  ceased  to  be  a 
normal  member  of  society,  and  to  the  critic  is  as 
nearly  inconsiderable  as  a  fellow  being  can  be. 

These  are  the  classes  whose  patronage  princi- 
pally determines  every  extraordinary  commercial 
success  of  a  work  of  fiction.  And  it  would  be 
unfair  to  say  that  their  total  judgment  is  alto- 
gether valueless.  If  a  story  can  give  even  a  fleet- 
ing pleasure  to  a  hundred  thousand  persons,  the 
chances  are  that  it  has  some  permanent  merit. 
"We  might  suppose,  it  is  true,  that  one  person 
out  of  every  thousand  of  our  population  could  be 
coimted  on  to  be  on  almost  any  side  of  any  ques- 
tion. But  as  a  matter  of  fact  given  enterprises 
are  supported  by  very  much  smaller  percentages. 
A  novel  which  "  seUs  "  five  thousand  copies  is  a 
reasonably  profitable  enterprise  for  the  pubhsher. 
Even  the  novel-reading  population  is  relatively 
smaU;  there  are  aU  sorts  of  chances  that  any 
given  person  may  escape  from  buying  contact 
with  any  given  book.  The  chances  that  he  will 
escape  readmg  contact  are  somewhat  less.    We 


52  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

have  made  it  so  easy  to  borrow  books,  now  that 
the  public  library  has  been  supplemented  by  vast 
circulating  services,  mainly  devoted  to  the  distri- 
bution of  fiction,  that  a  book  which  sells  by  thou- 
sands is  quite  likely  to  be  read  by  tens  of  thou- 
sands. 

It  is,  no  doubt,  time  to  cut  short  an  enumera- 
tion of  classes  to  which  any  one  may,  on  brief 
reflection,  be  able  to  add.  I  have  meant  simply 
to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  there  are  various 
distinct  reading  constituencies  surrounding,  and 
in  general  independent  of,  the  cultivated  reading 
pubKc.  This  class  is,  perhaps,  not  very  much 
larger  than  it  was  a  century  ago,  but  its  culti- 
vation has  a  much  broader  foundation.  It  is 
grounded  upon  some  acquaintance  with  the  best 
literature  of  ancient  and  modem  Europe,  and 
upon  a  thorough  knowledge  of  English  litera- 
ture. The  first  object  with  a  reader  of  this  class 
is  to  give  himself  the  chance  of  liking  the  best 
things.  It  is  a  mistake,  certainly,  to  plough 
through  a  book  as  a  task ;  there  are  many  mis- 
guided persons  who  make  a  virtue  of  "  doing " 
books,  in  precisely  the  spirit  which  leads  them  to 


THE  READING  PUBLIC  53 

"  do "  the  continental  galleries.  But  it  is  also 
a  mistake  from  mere  indolence  or  cocksureness 
to  hang  back  from  the  attempt  to  enjoy  in  some 
measure  what  otliers  have  greatly  enjoyed.  Every 
reader  has  his  blind  spots,  of  which  he  need  not 
be  either  proud  or  ashamed,  though  he  may  pro- 
perly regTet  them.  It  is  impossible  for  one  per- 
son to  get  into  Dante  or  for  another  to  make  out 
the  charm  of  "  Tom  Jones."  Yet  the  ideal  is  to 
be  able  to  enjoy  every  kind  of  thing  and  the  best 
of  every  kind. 

This  best  public  prefers  to  own  books  rather 
than  to  borrow  them.  It  has  an  eye  for  promis- 
ing novelties,  but  it  does  not  readily  mistake  pro- 
mise for  achievement.  More  than  any  other  read- 
ing class,  including  the  profusely  buying  class,  it 
helps  determine  the  absolute  value  of  books  which 
deserve  serious  appraisal.  How  large  this  class  is 
in  America  it  would  be  hard  to  estimate ;  dis- 
proportionately fewer  than  in  England,  we  must 
suppose.  It  constitutes,  at  least,  a  nucleus  of 
sound  acquirement  and  taste.  I  suppose  we  ought 
to  encourage  ourselves  to  look  for  its  steady, 
though  not  rapid,  increase.    Vaudeville  and  yel- 


54  THE  READING  PUBLIC 

low  journalism  to  the  contrary,  there  are  a  hun- 
dred influences  working  toward  the  elevation  of 
national  standards  of  taste.  Criticism  is,  it  may 
be,  one  of  the  least  of  these  influences ;  it  cannot 
do  better,  for  its  part,  than  to  insist  upon  and 
to  make  clear  the  distinction  between  what  is 
instructive,  what  is  amusing,  and  what  is  capable 
of  giving  permanent  delight. 


PACE   IN   READING 


PACE  IN  READING 

A  COMMON  and  trivial  excuse  given  by  those 
who  read  little  is  that  they  have  no  time  for  read- 
ing. One  may  have  no  time  for  eating  or  sleep- 
ing, but  hardly  no  time  to  make  love  or  to  read. 
It  is  good  will,  concentration,  and  the  habit  of 
dispatch,  not  leisure  or  unlimited  opportunity, 
which  have  always  performed  the  greatest  won- 
ders in  both  of  these  useful  pursuits.  Many  per- 
sons in  mature  life  are  conscious  of  a  gentle  and 
luxurious  sentiment  in  favor  of  reading,  which 
comes  to  nothing  because  they  do  not  know  how 
to  read.  With  aU  the  good  will  in  the  world, 
they  lack  concentration  and  the  habit  of  dispatch. 
The  good  will  was  not  applied  early  enough,  or 
not  applied  at  all  to  any  other  end  than  the  idle 
diversion  of  the  moment.  This  naturally  residted 
in  the  formation  of  the  newspaper  habit,  by  which 
I  do  not  mean  simply  the  habit  of  reading  news- 
papers, but  the  habit  of    mind  which  makes  it 


58  PACE   IN   READING 

possible  for  men  to  spend  an  evening  in  going 
through  motions.  There  is  no  more  reason  for 
spending  two  hours  in  reading  the  newspaper  than 
in  having  one's  boots  blacked.  Some  people  never 
make  their  way  into  the  great  Establishment  of 
Letters  farther  than  the  vestibule,  where  they 
spend  their  lives  contentedly  playing  marbles 
with  the  hall-boys.  Of  course  we  do  not  call  the 
newspaper  worthless  simply  because  some  other 
things  are  worth  more.  The  best  reading  is  both 
intensive  and  extensive ;  one  reads  a  little  of 
everything,  and  a  great  deal  of  some  things.  The 
good  reader  takes  all  reading  to  be  his  province. 
Newspapers,  periodicals,  books  new  and  old,  all 
present  themselves  to  him  in  their  proper  per- 
spective ;  they  are  all  grist  to  his  mill,  but  they 
do  not  go  into  the  same  hopper  or  require  the 
same  process.  On  the  contrary,  one  of  the  main 
distinctions  of  the  skilled  reader  is  that  without 
varying  as  to  intensity,  he  varies  almost  indefi- 
nitely as  to  pace.  This  power  of  reading  flexibly 
comes  mainly,  of  course,  with  practice.  For  those 
who  have  lacked  an  early  experience  of  books, 
the  manipidation  of  them  is  never  likely  to  be- 


PACE   IN   READING  59 

come  the  perfect  and  instinctive  process  of  adjust- 
ment which  it  should  be.  People  often  acliieve  a 
certain  degTee  of  education  and  refinement  late 
in  life,  but  seldom,  I  think,  the  power  of  the  ac- 
complished reading  man.  It  is  simply  not  to  be 
expected.  An  adult  who  takes  up  the  violin  may 
get  much  amusement  and  profit  from  his  instru- 
ment, but  he  cannot  hope  to  master  it.  A  certain 
increase  of  facility,  however,  the  belated  reader 
may  surely  expect  to  gain  from  some  sort  of  ob- 
servance of  this  smiple  principle  of  adjustment. 

This  anxious  but  unskilled  reader  is  too  likely 
to  have  a  set  gait,  —  so  many  words  to  the  minute 
or  lines  to  the  hour.  An  essay,  an  editorial,  a 
chapter  in  a  novel  or  in  the  Bible,  a  scientific 
article,  a  short  story,  if  they  contain  the  same 
number  of  words,  take  up  just  the  same  amount 
of  this  misguided  person's  time.  No  wonder  read- 
ing becomes  an  incubus  to  him,  with  the  appall- 
ing monotony  of  its  procession  of  printed  words 
filing  endlessly  before  him.  He  really  has  time 
enough,  if  he  knew  how  to  make  use  of  it.  "  Eben 
Holden  "  keeps  him  busy  for  a  week  or  more  ;  it 
should  be  read  in  a  few  hours.    He  plods  method- 


60  PACE   IN  READING 

ically  through  Sir  Walter,  and  finds  him  slow ; 
the  happy  reader  who  can  get  Quentin  and  his 
Isabelle  satisfactorily  married  in  six  hours  does 
not.  A  trained  reader  readjusts  his  focus  for  each 
objective.  Milton  may  be  read  in  words  or  lines, 
Macaulay  in  sentences,  Thackeray  in  paragraphs, 
Conan  Doyle  in  pages.  The  eye,  that  is,  readily 
gains  the  power  of  taking  in  words  in  groups  in- 
stead of  separately.  How  large  a  group  the  glance 
can  manage  varies  with  the  seriousness  of  the  sub- 
ject. With  the  same  degree  of  concentration,  eye 
and  mind  will  take  care  of  a  page  of  the  "  Pris- 
oner of  Zenda  "  as  easily  as  they  can  absorb  a  hue 
of  "  Macbeth,"  or  one  of  Fitzgerald's  quatrains. 

Of  course  this  disposes  of  the  indolent,  lolling 
way  of  reading,  —  or  rather  makes  a  rare  indul- 
gence of  it.  When  one  occasionally  comes  upon 
the  novel  of  his  heart,  or  the  poem  he  has  waited 
for,  he  may  well  afford  to  consider  it  at  his  luxu- 
rious leisure,  minimizing  labor  by  dilatoriness. 
But  as  a  rule  the  widely  reading  man  is  not  an 
indolent  person.  Not  that  he  is  to  be  always  keep- 
ing his  nose  in  a  book.  By  regulating  his  pace, 
he   not  only   covers   an   astonishing  amount  of 


PACE   IN   READING  61 

gi-ound  in  reading,  but  makes  room  for  other 
tilings.  Pie  knows  how  to  get  the  most  for  his 
time,  that  is  all.  A  bee  does  not  eat  his  flower 
to  get  the  honey  out  of  it.  The  eye  of  the  skilled 
reader  acts  like  a  sixth  sense,  directing  him  to 
the  gist  of  the  matter,  in  whatever  form  it  may 
appear.  Twenty  minutes  yields  all  that  there  is 
for  him  in  the  book  which  his  neighbor,  knowing 
that  it  would  mean  a  week's  spare  hours,  is  care- 
ful to  avoid. 

To  observe  a  proper  pace  disposes  also  of  indis- 
criminate reading  aloud.  There  appears  to  be  a 
generally  cherished  household  belief  that  reading 
aloud  is  of  itself  a  virtuous  domestic  exercise. 
It  has,  no  doubt,  its  value  as  a  social  exjjedient 
for  "  keeping  the  boys  at  home,"  or  for  mitigat- 
ing the  ennui  of  such  as  must  sew  or  darn  of  an 
evening.  It  affords  a  practical  method  of  diffus- 
ing information  among  the  greater  number  at  the 
expense  of  one  pair  of  eyes ;  as  well  as  of  lulling 
the  aged  or  infirm  to  that  luxurious  slumber 
which  is  Hkely  to  be  insured  by  the  assiduous 
wakefulness  of  somebody  else.  That  is  a  charm- 
ing pictm-e  of  the  united  family  gathered  about 


62  PACE   IN  READING 

the  hearth  while  paterfamilias  reads  aloud.  It 
really  does  not  matter,  so  far  as  the  attractiveness 
of  the  group  is  concerned,  what  he  is  reading ; 
it  may  be  "  The  Kise  and  Fall  of  the  Dutch  Re- 
public," or  "  Paradise  Lost,"  or  "  Sherlock 
Holmes,"  or  the  latest  number  of  the  "  Ladies' 
Domestic  Twaddler."  Never  mind.  The  fact 
remains  that  father  is  reading  aloud. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  scoff  at  any  institution, 
or  even  at  any  theory,  so  venerable.  I  do  wish 
to  suggest,  however,  that  comparatively  few  books 
are  fit  to  be  read  aloud.  One  may  make  a  reason- 
able contention  to  the  effect  that  all  hterature 
should  have  a  vocable  and  audible  quality ;  but 
the  fact  remains  that  outside  of  poetry  there  are 
few  forms  of  literature  which  are  not  as  well  or 
better  off  without  the  interposition  of  the  voice. 
The  reason  appears  to  be  that  a  printed  page 
empowers  the  ear  with  a  facidty  of  rapid  hear- 
ing. The  inward  ear  may  receive  an  impression 
quite  as  surely  as  the  outward  ear,  and  far  more 
rapidly.  Printed  words  represent  sound  rather 
than  form  to  most  people ;  and  this  is  at  first  an 
obstacle  to  the  attainment  of  pace  in  reading. 


PACE   IN   READING  G3 

Many  persons  never  lose  the  sense  of  literature 
as  printed  speech,  and  consequently  read  a  book 
aloud  almost  as  fast  as  they  read  it  to  them- 
selves. They  would  like  to  read  it  quite  as  fast, 
and  their  attempt  residts  in  that  hurrying  mono- 
tone which  is  characteristic  of  most  family  read- 
ing. The  voice  is  not  really  called  upon  to  exert 
itself  intelligently.  It  is  merely  made  use  of  to 
suggest  print ;  an  odd  retaliation  of  the  eye. 
Such  reading  is  nothing  better  than  a  labor-sav- 
ing makeshift.  It  does  not  interpret,  it  only 
makes  a  clumsy  conveyance.  The  process  is 
amusingly  complicated,  if  we  follow  it  from  the 
first  conception  of  the  author's  mind  to  the  final 
interpretation  of  the  reader.  A  sentence,  we  will 
say,  suggests  itself  to  some  person's  mind  as 
speech.  He  makes  a  record  of  it  in  writing, 
which  is  rendered  more  legible  and  available  by 
print.  This  record  the  eye  is  able  to  reconvert 
into  material  for  the  inward  ear  to  deal  with. 
But  the  eye  acts  rapidly,  and  is  all  the  time  urg- 
ing the  inward  ear  to  shake  off  the  sloth  of  the 
outward  ear,  and  to  get  on  with  the  business  in 
hand.    Consequently,  the  inward  ear  becomes  im- 


64  PACE  IN  READING 

patient  of  its  clumsier  fellow,  and  prefers  to  rely 
directly  on  that  brisk  official,  the  eye.  The  voice 
is  first  embarrassed  by  this  impatience,  then  dis- 
couraged. It  finds  that  a  rough  and  hasty  appeal 
to  the  outward  ear  serves ;  thence  an  impression 
is  communicated  to  the  inward  eye,  by  means  of 
which,  in  turn,  the  inward  ear  is  able  to  make  a 
satisfactorily  rapid  interpretation  of  what  the 
original  speaker  was  saying. 

I  am  afraid  this  sounds  a  good  deal  like  a  bit 
of  amateur  psychologizing ;  but  I  lean  toward  the 
hope  that  there  is  common  sense  in  the  specula- 
tion, notwithstanding.  I  should  draw  two  deduc- 
tions from  it :  the  first,  that  no  literature  is 
worth  reading  aloud  which  will  endure  a  mark- 
edly greater  pace  than  the  voice  is  capable  of 
making  intelligible ;  the  second,  that  only  per- 
sons who  are  capable  of  interpreting  literature 
by  means  of  the  voice  ought,  unless  for  social  or 
practical  purposes,  to  read  aloud  at  all.  Litera- 
ture has  a  right  to  be  interpreted,  and  not  merely 
made  vocal. 

It  is  clear  that  poetry  most  naturally  lends 
itself  to  reading  aloud  ;  for  it  is  essentially  musi- 


PACE  IN  READING  65 

cal  and  compact,  and  so  pregnant  in  substance 
as  to  make  hiu-ried  reading  out  of  the  question. 
Beyond  this,  the  briefer  prose  forms  are  most 
amenable.  Whatever  is  most  compact,  what- 
ever is  most  dramatic,  or,  better,  most  lyrical,  is 
made  for  viva  voce  treatment.  A  letter,  an  entry 
or  two  in  some  diary,  a  chapter  of  autobiography, 
a  few  pages  of  Jane  Austen,  a  humorous  short 
story,  a  number  of  the  "  Autocrat,"  —  these 
offer  the  readiest  voice-hold  to  the  family  inter- 
preter. A  half  hour  of  such  reading  may  be  one 
of  the  happiest  of  daily  episodes.  It  sets  no  pre- 
miimi  upon  mere  indolence ;  it  interferes  in  no 
serious  way  vnth.  the  liberties  of  the  family  circle. 
It  does  absolutely  the  best  that  can  be  done  for 
the  interpretation  of  the  purer  forms  of  litera- 
ture. It  reserves  the  other  forms  (and  the  mod- 
ern reader  has,  alas,  to  concern  himself  largely 
with  these)  for  the  individual  reader,  who  may 
profitably  decide  for  himself  whether  the  special 
instance  calls  upon  him  to  peruse,  to  skim,  or  to 
sldp ;  and  at  what  pace.  The  experienced 
reader,  in  short,  is  an  artist,  and,  like  other 
artists,  attains  his  highest  powers  only  when  he 


66  PACE  IN  READING 

has  learned  what  to  subordinate,  to  slight,  or  to 
omit.  .  The  unhappy  person  whose  conscience  will 
not  let  him  refuse  an  equally  deliberate  consider- 
ation of  every  six  inches  of  black  and  white  that 
comes  his  way  may  be  an  excellent  husband  and 
father,  a  meritorious  lawyer  or  merchant,  a  model 
citizen  :  he  is  certainly  not  a  good  reader. 


EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY 


"EFFUSIONS   OF   FANCY" 

"  Let  us  leave  it  to  the  Reviewers,"  wrote  Miss 
Austen  something  like  a  century  ago,  "  to  abuse 
such  effusions  of  fancy  at  their  leisure,  and  over 
every  new  novel  to  talk  in  threadbare  strains  of 
the  trash  with  which  the  press  now  groans.  .  .  . 
From  pride,  ignorance,  or  fashion,  our  foes  are 
almost  as  many  as  our  readers,  and  while  the 
abihties  of  the  nine-hundredth  abridger  of  the 
'  History  of  England,'  or  of  the  man  who  collects 
and  publishes  in  a  volume  some  dozen  lines  of 
Milton,  Pope,  and  Prior,  with  a  paper  from  the 
*  Spectator '  and  a  chapter  from  Sterne,  are  eu- 
logized by  a  thousand  pens,  there  seems  a  general 
wish  of  decrying  the  capacity  and  undervaluing 
the  labour  of  the  novelist,  and  of  sHghting  the 
performances  which  have  only  genius,  wit,  and 
taste  to  recommend  them.  '  I  am  no  novel-reader ; 
I  seldom  look  into  novels ;  do  not  imagine  that  / 
often  read  novels ;  it  is  really  very  well  for  a 
novel.'    Such  is  the  common  cant." 


70  "EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY" 

If  Miss  Austen  had  been  born  a  century  later, 
she  would  have  had  less  cause  for  her  spirited 
sally.  There  are  stiU  people  who  extend  the  left 
hand  to  fiction,  and  give  it,  somewhat  ostenta- 
tiously, a  seat  below  salt ;  but  they  are  few,  and 
it  is  noticed  that  their  attention  to  the  high  dis- 
course of  the  upper  table  is  subject  to  lapses. 
The  present  tendency  is,  indeed,  toward  the  other 
extreme.  A  frank  arrogance  is  manifested  by  the 
universal  guest ;  he  takes  the  head  of  the  board 
as  by  right,  and  if  there  is  anything  which  under- 
placed  preachers,  historians,  politicians,  or  philo- 
sophers can  teU  him,  he  would  be  charmed  to 
know  the  reason  why.  No?  Then  he  will  him- 
self make  shift  to  expound  the  world  and  the  full- 
ness thereof.  He  is  at  least  sure  of  an  audience ; 
and  this  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

I 
It  may  be  surmised  that  there  would  be  a  whim- 
sical twist  to  Miss  Austen's  smiling  approbation 
of  this  development.  Her  own  work,  yes,  it  had 
"  genius,  wit,  and  taste  "  to  recommend  it ;  but  it 
was  not  founded  upon  a  theory,  it  did  not  aim  to 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  71 

supplant  the  pulpit,  the  platform,  the  laboratory, 
or  the  easy-chair ;  it  aimed  simply  to  give  delight 
by  interpreting  human  life  as  one  person  saw  it. 

Now  there  are  many  planes  upon  which  life 
may  be  interpreted,  and  many  media  for  the  in- 
terpreter. When  Scott  talked  of  his  "  big  bow- 
wow" strain  in  contrast  with  Miss  Austen's  work, 
he  was  not  defining  a  difference.  But  his  phrase 
suggests  all  sorts  of  differences  ;  in  plane,  in  scale, 
in  atmosphere.  No  other  prose  form  so  nearly  ap- 
proaches the  catholicity  of  poetry  in  giving  expres- 
sion to  all  orders,  all  degrees,  of  creative  power. 
The  very  vagueness  of  its  boundaries  as  to  form 
and  content,  the  fact  that  its  possibilities  are  as 
yet  hardly  defined,  does  much  toward  account- 
ing for  the  richness  and  variety  of  what  has  been 
the  most  interesting  and  characteristic,  if  not  the 
finest,  literary  product  of  the  past  two  centuries. 

Much  confusion  has  naturally  attended  the 
development  of  this  new  form,  and  our  criticism 
of  it.  I  incline  to  think  that  a  suggestive  classifi- 
cation may  be  borrowed  from  poetry.  By  such 
terms  as  lyrical,  didactic,  and  epical,  we  may  at 
least  suggest  the  contrasting  qualities  of  the  novel 


72  "EFFUSIONS   OF  FANCY" 

of  emotion,  the  novel  of  intention,  and  tlie  novel 
of  interpretation,  the  types  which,  so  far  as  types 
are  distinguishable,  fiction  perennially  takes.  Even 
Miss  Austen's  day  coidd  produce  "  The  Mysteries 
of  Udolpho,"  "  Caleb  WiUiams,"  and  "  Pride  and 
Prejudice." 

I  am  not  able,  according  to  the  present  fashion, 
to  look  upon  the  short  story  as  a  distinct  mode  of 
fiction.  It  is  now  conunonly  alleged  that  the  short 
story  writer  is  exempt  from  many  of  the  require- 
ments laid  upon  the  novelist.  A  scene,  an  episode, 
a  rapid  series  of  events,  we  are  told,  is  all  that 
he  can  be  expected  to  deal  with ;  and  conciseness 
and  sahency  are  the  only  qualities  we  can  require 
in  his  product.  But  how  is  this  saliency  to  be 
measured?  How  are  we  going  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  taking  story  and  the  story  of  perma- 
nent power  ?  In  accordance  with  what  principle 
is  the  blessed  remnant  to  be  chosen  by  time  from 
among  the  ten  thousand  short  stories  now  printed 
every  year  ?  Or  wiU  they  be  chosen  for  different 
reasons,  and  not  in  accordance  with  any  single 
principle  whatever  ?  As  applied  to  the  novel,  we 
do  not  find  it  hard  to  solve  the  problem  after  a 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  73 

fashion.  We  say  that  the  novel  will  live  or  not 
according  to  the  richness  or  poverty  of  its  inter- 
pretation of  hiunan  life.  A  man  must  have  a  big 
view  and  a  round  and  hearty  voice,  or  he  will  not 
be  a  great  novelist ;  this  is  our  theory.  It  pro- 
vides us  with  an  admirable  means  of  judging  the 
massive,  epical  t5q)e  of  novel.  But  a  story  is  not 
necessarily  massive  because  it  is  long,  or  insub- 
stantial because  it  is  short.  We  do  not  pretend 
to  classify  canvases  according  to  their  size,  or 
poems  according  to  their  length  ;  why  should  we 
apply  the  footrule  to  works  of  fiction  ?  No  doubt 
a  composition  in  the  grand  style  is  likely  to  be 
more  effective  if  the  scale  is  not  restricted  beyond 
certain  bounds.  Yet  small  things  are  not  always 
trivial.  Not  every  short  story  is  confined  to  a 
scene  or  an  episode ;  and  long  stories  often 
achieve  intricacy  but  not  mass.  It  is  remarkable 
that  in  many  short  stories  so  rich  an  effect  should 
be  compassed  by  means  of  so  few  strokes ;  but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  thing  is  done.  And 
the  truth  seems  to  me  to  be  that  breadth  of  view 
and  method  are  by  no  means  uncommon  in  writers 
of  fiction  who  choose  to  employ  the  smaller  scale. 


74  "EFFUSIONS   OF  FANCY" 

The  only  type  of  short  story  which  differs  in  kind 
from  the  long  story  is  the  tale  dealing  with  some 
motive  so  simple  as  to  make  brevity  the  price  of 
saliency.  The  distinction,  in  short,  to  be  of  use 
must  hang  upon  quality,  not  quantity.  If  such 
stories  as  Mr.  James's  "  Broken  Wings  "  are  to 
be  properly  classed  with  "  The  New  Arabian 
Nights,"  while  the  "  Prisoner  of  Zenda "  is  al- 
lowed a  place  beside  "Henry  Esmond,"  I  do  not 
know  how,  imless  by  footrule,  the  critic  can  ven- 
ture to  gauge  relative  values  in  fiction. 

The  tale,  so  far  as  it  is  distinguishable  from 
the  novel,  is  inchned  to  be  lyrical  rather  than 
epical :  the  more  or  less  purely  emotional  pre- 
sentation of  some  phase  of  human  experience  in 
contrast  with  the  interpretation  of  that  experience 
in  the  large,  as  discerned  by  the  creative  spirit  in 
its  loftier  and  serener  mood. 

Of  lyrical  fiction  the  romance  is  of  course  the 
most  popular  form;  a  fact  which  has  afforded 
critics  a  possibly  unnecessary  degree  of  discon- 
tent. "  In  this  age,"  wi'ote  Walter  Bagehot 
nearly  fifty  years  ago,  "  the  great  readers  of  fic- 
tion were  young  people  ;  the  '  addiction  '  of  these 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  75 

is  to  romance :  and  aceordingly  a  kind  of  novel 
has  become  so  familiar  to  us  as  almost  to  engross 
the  name,  which  deals  solely  with  the  passion  of 
love ;  and  if  it  uses  other  parts  of  human  life  for 
the  occasions  of  its  art,  it  does  so  only  cursorily 
and  occasionally,  and  with  a  view  of  tlirowing 
into  a  stronger  or  more  delicate  light  those  senti- 
mental parts  of  earthly  affairs  which  are  the 
special  objects  of  dehneation." 

But  indeed  we  must  not  be  too  stern  about 
such  matters.  Other  books  beside  the  greatest 
are  worth  reading.  One  is  not  always  keyed  to 
the  highest  enjoyment.  It  is  proper  that  there 
should  be  books  to  fit  the  holiday  mood.  As  a 
class  they  will  be  light,  free,  somewhat  detached 
from  problems  and  from  passions,  a  little  plea- 
sant, a  little  commonplace,  perhaps.  They  will 
not  be  artificial,  and  they  will  not  be  over- 
intense.  They  may  be  coimted  upon,  as  a  show- 
man may  say,  to  reach  the  sympathy  without 
tickling  the  sensibilities,  and  to  stir  the  brain 
agreeably  without  getting  upon  the  nerves.  The 
things  that  happen  may  be,  viewed  in  the  hght 
of    experience,  improbable  ;    but    Experience  is 


76  "EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY" 

a  creature  of  unamiable  limitations,  and  in  the 
nature  of  things  hardly  sib  to  the  Muse  of  ro- 
mance. It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  demand 
for  "  something  light  and  pleasant  "  which  such 
books  satisfy  comes  not  only  from  a  vast  niunber 
of  over-buoyant  (let  us  not  say  siUy)  persons  who 
read  nothing  except  fiction,  but  from  a  consider- 
able number  of  the  over-sorry,  who  expect  it  of 
fiction  now  and  then  to  divert  them  from  the  sad- 
ness and  complexity  of  actual  life  by  the  soothing 
piu'r  of  the  romantic  ideal.  Probably  nobody,  not 
even  the  writer  of  "  realistic  "  fiction,  fails  to  see 
the  value  of  romance  in  performing  this  office. 
On  the  other  hand,  not  even  the  romancer  woidd 
restrict  the  art  of  fiction  to  the  manipulation  of 
romantic  properties.  If  "  The  Three  Musketeers  " 
and  "  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities  "  are  triumphs,  so 
are  "  The  Scarlet  Letter "  and  "  The  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham."  It  is  a  good  thing  to  be  amused, 
and  it  is  also  a  good  thing  to  be  set  thinking  and 
feeling.  There  is  no  reason  why  anybody  should 
read  any  sort  of  fiction  if  he  does  not  care  for  it, 
but  there  is  something  to  regret  if  he  does  not 
care  for  all  sorts. 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  77 

II 

The  present  writer  has  several  times  become 
aware  in  the  moment  of  composition  that  certain 
books  which  he  had  greatly  enjoyed,  and  which 
he  wished  to  commend  to  others,  were  not  the 
kind  of  thing  story-readers  as  a  class  can  be 
counted  on  to  enjoy.  They  did  not  turn  out 
right ;  either  the  people  did  not  marry  at  all,  or 
they  did  not  marry  and  live  happy  ever  after. 
Books  in  which  such  a  condition  of  things  is  per- 
mitted cannot  very  well  appeal  to  a  large  class. 
No  doubt  it  is  agreeable  that  books  should  "  turn 
out  right,"  and  that  in  general  people  shoidd  not 
only  marry,  but  marry  and  live  happy  ever  after. 
Why,  one  is  tempted  to  ask,  should  not  serious 
fiction  be  encouraged  to  turn  out  right?  "VVliy 
is  it  not  more  wholesome  and  sane,  as  well  as 
more  comfortable,  to  cherish  the  conviction  that 
virtue  is  rather  in  the  way  of  being  handsomely 
rewarded  for  its  pains  in  the  end  ?  ^Vhy,  in  order 
to  be  serious,  is  it  necessary  to  be  pessimistic  and 
morbid  ? 

The  last  of   these  questions,   at  least,  arises 


78  "EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY" 

from  a  prevalent  inclination  on  the  part  of  read- 
ers of  fiction  to  identify  a  sober  attitude  toward 
life  with  that  condition  of  diseased  sensibility 
which  is  called  morbidness.  Fiction  in  its  higher 
forms  presents  a  sincere  personal  interpretation 
of  human  life.  That  interpretation  is  not  neces- 
sarily sickly  or  untrue  (or,  as  the  verdict  of  the 
afternoon  tea  puts  it,  cynical  and  pessimistic),  be- 
cause it  does  not  chance  to  be  pretty  and  agreeable. 
One  gets  from  the  work  of  Mr.  Henry  James 
a  sustenance  very  different  fi-om  that  which  is 
offered  by  the  licensed  victualers  of  romance. 

Here  we  approach  dangerously  near  that  Ser- 
bonian  bog,  the  question  of  realism.  I  must  sim- 
ply confess  that  to  me  the  significance  of  a  novel 
consists  not  in  its  extraneous  theme,  but  in  the 
interpretation  of  that  theme.  There  is,  for  the 
rest,  a  certain  fitness  of  things  which  cannot  pro- 
fitably be  disregarded.  There  are  facts  the  mean- 
ing of  which  does  not  deserve  passionate  scrutiny. 
Not  long  ago  a  certain  story  which  shall  be  name- 
less was  very  widely  read  and  praised  by  devotees 
of  the  realistic  method.  It  dealt  with  the  four 
members  of  a  family  isolated  upon  a  Scotch  farm. 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  79 

The  son  becomes  a  drnnkanl,  murders  the  father 
(who  would  have  deserved  to  be  put  out  of  the 
way  if  he  had  not  been  clearly  insane),  and 
poisons  himself ;  the  mother  and  the  daughter, 
who  are  afflicted  respectively  with  cancer  and 
phthisis,  presently  make  use  of  the  poison  which 
the  son  has  left  —  "  and  then  there  were  none." 

"  Can  such  things  be, 
And  overcome  us  like  a  summer's  cloud, 
Without  our  special  wonder  ?  " 

It  is  amazing,  but  they  can.  We  read  of  them 
often  in  the  newspapers,  and  without  particular 
emotion  ;  not,  probably,  because  we  have  become 
hardened,  but  because  some  reliable  instinct  as- 
sures us  that  these  events  are,  after  all,  not 
tragically  real.  They  have,  brutal  as  the  fact 
seems,  no  determinable  meaning ;  they  are  to 
truth  as  we  know  it  what  nightmares  are  to 
waking  experience.  One  of  these  ugly  common 
nightmares  was  taken  as  the  theme  of  this  story. 
Three  of  the  characters  are  hopelessly  weak,  and 
the  fourth  is  a  monomaniac.  This  is  not  the  ma- 
terial of  art.  It  will  be  useful  to  the  reporter 
rather  than  to  the  story-teller  who  hopes  to  have 


80  "EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY" 

his  work  last.  The  novelist  did  a  clever  and 
ruthless  bit  of  reporting.  It  should  be  said 
that  he  was  promptly  hailed  as  the  Scottish 
Thomas  Hardy,  and  even  (not  to  give  too  much 
leeway  to  posterity)  as  the  Scottish  Balzac. 

If  moral  insignificance  disqualifies,  how  far 
may  physical  disability  be  regarded  as  a  tragic 
motive?  In  more  than  one  prominent  novel  of 
the  day,  an  abnormal  physical  condition  is  estab- 
lished at  the  outset  as  the  basis  of  the  psychologi- 
cal action.  More  than  ordinarily  amusing  is  the 
case  of  the  hero  who  turns  out  to  be  the  owner 
of  a  creditable  cancer,  which  is  employed  at  the 
eleventh  hour  to  draw  off  the  venom  of  one's  con- 
tempt for  his  character.  We  can  certainly  put 
our  leisure  to  far  better  use  by  reading  "  some- 
thing light  and  pleasant "  than  by  poring  over 
records  of  the  emotional  experiences  of  "  intense  " 
persons  whose  lamentableness  even  is  not  impres- 
sive because  their  characters  are  insignificant. 
Let  us  have  our  delineations  of  the  average  per- 
son, by  all  means,  our  Laphams  and  oui*  Ken- 
tons  ;  in  their  society  we  shall  at  least  be  in  no 
danger  of  confounding  character  —  the  real  stuff 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  81 

of  personality  —  with  temperament,  which  is  a 
minor  though  showy  mgredient  thereof, 

III 
Unfortunately  our  clever  writing  loves  to  deal 
with  temperament,  especially  with  the  "  artistic 
temperament,"  whatever  that  is.  Its  possessor 
appears  to  be  a  figure  particularly  to  the  mind  of 
the  feminine  novelist.  She  finds  in  it,  perhaps,  a 
grateful  means  of  accounting  for  the  uncomfort- 
able behavior  of  the  Orsino  type  of  man,  with  his 
giddy  and  imfirm  fancies,  and  his  complacent 
self-absorption.  What  sort  of  morality  can  one 
expect  of  a  person  who  threatens  to  be  inspired 
at  any  moment  ?  The  rougher  sex  does  not  share 
George  Eliot's  tenderness  for  Ladislaw,  or  Mrs. 
Ward's  consideration  for  Manisty.  It  chooses  to 
fancy  the  masculine  character  an  Integer,  at  the 
cost,  if  need  be,  of  cleverness.  It  prefers  an 
Orlando,  a  John  Ridd,  or  a  Micah  Clarke,  to  the 
shuffling  and  emotional  creatures  in  masculine 
garb  in  which  women  seem  to  find  some  unac- 
countable fascination.  Seriously,  is  irresponsibil- 
ity, masculine  or  feminine,  so  absorbing  a  theme 


82  "EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY" 

as  to  deserve  its  present  prominence  in  fiction  ? 
Even  Mr.  Barrie's  Tommy,  a  sad  enough  specta- 
cle in  all  conscience,  was  not  half  so  dreary  as 
these  weak-kneed  and  limber-souled  little  gentle- 
men whom  we  are  now  required  to  hear  about. 

There  is  another  pit  toward  which  a  morbid 
sentimentaKsm  leads  us :  that  which  is  reserved 
for  the  morally  unwholesome.  There  is  a  litera^ 
ture  of  immorality  which  we  know  how  to  take ; 
it  bears  its  character  upon  its  forehead.  Not  sel- 
dom it  is  able  to  command,  at  least,  the  respect 
due  to  outspoken  virility.  But  a  literature  of 
strained  idealism  tinctured  with  subtle  prurience 
of  the  imagination  is  not  even  virile ;  Sterne  to 
the  contrary,  it  is  not  of  our  race.  "  Tom  Jones  " 
is  immoral,  let  us  say  ;  but  it  is  rather  among  the 
fine  sentiments  and  boasted  pruderies  of  "  Paid  et 
Virginie  "  that  one  finds  the  imagination  grown 
corrupt  and  emasculate.  Such  books,  rather  than 
those  which  plainly  and  simply  deal  with  relations 
of  sex,  should  be  kept  from  the  young  person 
and  from  the  old.  That  only  the  conventional  and 
"  proper  "  should  be  treated  in  fiction  is  a  tradi- 
tion which  we  have  for  the  most  part  outlived.    I 


"EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY"  83 

think  of  a  recent  book  containing  "  two  studies  of 
the  strength  of  New  England  character."  In  the 
first,  a  man  finds  happiness  in  a  love  outside 
marriage,  of  which  one  cannot  help  feeling  the 
sacredness ;  in  the  second,  a  woman  finds  equal 
happiness  in  lavishing  a  perfect  devotion  upon  a 
poor  creature  whom  she  has  married  for  love,  and 
whom  she  continues  to  love  in  spite  of  his  un- 
worthiness  till  the  time  comes  for  her  to  give  her 
life  for  his.  The  man's  marriage  is  outwardly  a 
success,  but  really  a  bitter  failure,  because  it  is 
sanctified  by  love  on  neither  side.  The  woman's 
marriage  is  apparently  a  pitiful  mistake,  yet  the 
best  of  happiness  for  her  because  she  loves,  and 
is  able  to  die  for,  a  man  who,  to  the  best  of  his 
nature,  loves  her  in  return.  These  are  somber 
pictures,  curiously  offset  against  each  other  in  set- 
ting, as  well  as  in  theme :  on  the  one  hand,  that 
barren  and  ugly  dullness  of  life  in  a  sand-blown 
coast  village,  on  the  other,  that  equally  barren 
and  ugly  excitement  of  life  in  a  city  slum. 

Are  any  "  lessons "  taught  by  such  stories  ? 
All  lessons,  and  none ;  for  the  artist  does  not 
concern  himself  primarily  with  texts  and  proposi- 


84  "EFFUSIONS  OF  FANCY" 

tions ;  he  paints,  not  ideas  and  forces,  but  men 
and.  women.  At  opposite  extremes  of  the  field  of 
fiction  lie  realism  and  romance.  Certain  arid 
patches  of  didacticism  blot  the  rich  expanse  of 
interpretative  prose  writing  which  lies  between. 

Human  nature,  human  types,  human  manners 
and  fortunes  —  these  are  the  deeper  themes  for 
fiction,  infinitely  deeper  than  theories,  or  moral- 
izings,  or  propaganda  of  any  sort.  A  great  novel, 
like  a  great  poem,  is  the  product  of  insight  rather 
than  of  reasoning  or  constructive  power.  Facts 
and  theories,  after  all,  have  in  themselves  very 
little  value  for  literature  or  for  any  other  art. 
They  may  catch  our  attention  and  applause  for 
the  moment,  but  the  power  of  truth  in  them,  the 
personahty  behind  them,  are  what  we  really  care 
for  in  the  end. 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 


AMERICAN   HUMOR 

So  many  wise  things  have  been  said  about  Ameri- 
can humor,  there  seems  to  be  little  occasion  for 
sapng  anything  else  about  it,  unless  humorously, 
Ahsit  omen  !  that  is  not  within  the  intention  of 
the  present  remarks,  which  aim  rather  to  offer 
some  simple  explanation  of  a  familiar  phenome- 
non, the  "  petering  o,ut "  of  the  American  humor- 
ist, and  to  point  a  moral. 

I 
One  difficulty  in  talking  about  humor  lies  in  the 
indeterminate  meaning  of  the  word.  The  trouble 
is  not  so  much  that  it  has  changed  as  that  it  has 
not  made  a  thorough  job  of  changing.  We  are 
incHned  to  give  it  a  sense  well-nigh  the  most  pro- 
found before  it  has  rid  itself  of  a  very  trivial 
one.  We  brevet  it  on  even  terms  with  "  imagina- 
tion "  while  it  is  stiU  trudging  in  the  ranks  beside 
such  old  irresponsible  comrades  as  "  whimsy  " 
and  "  conceit ; "  and,  worst  of  all,  we  too  often 


88  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

allow  it  to  be  confounded  with  that  vulgar  civilian, 
"  facetiousness."  Mr.  Budgell,  according  to  Gold- 
smith, bore  "  the  character  of  an  humorist  "  — 
the  name  of  an  eccentric  fellow.  He  is  not  at  all 
a  joking  kind  of  man,  and  might  perfectly  well, 
for  all  this  description  tells  us,  lack  what  we  call 
a  "  sense  of  humor."  Cranks  are  notoriously  defi- 
cient in  that  sense,  and  the  people  who  are  hitting 
off  Mr.  Budgell  as  "  an  humorist "  mean  simply 
that  he  is  a  crank.  Now  I  do  not  thmk  we  have 
quite  outgrown  this  conception  of  the  word's 
meaning,  though  we  have  added  something  to  it. 
We  like  to  think  that  our  popular  humorists  are, 
first  of  all,  queer  fellows.  Jesters  like  Bill  Nye 
have  not  been  slow  to  recognize  this  taste  in  their 
audience,  and  the  absurd  toggery  of  the  clown 
has  been  deliberately  employed  to  enhance  the 
relish  of  their  screamingness.  In  fact,  our  pro- 
fessional man  of  humor  is  a  pretty  close  modern 
equivalent  of  the  Old  World  Fool :  a  creature  of 
motley,  who  is  admitted  to  have  some  sense  about 
him,  but  must  appear  to  have  none  if  he  wishes 
to  be  taken  seriously.  More  than  one  of  Shake- 
speare's  Fools  possess  the  illuminating  kind  of 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  89 

hiiinor ;  but  the  jest  is  what  they  were  valued  for. 
It  would  not  be  very  hard,  perhaps,  to  show  that 
in  America  this  ideal  of  the  silly-funny  man  has 
survived  ynth  especial  distinctness,  and  that  upon 
this  survival  the  quality  of  our  alleged  American 
humor  really  depends. 

II 
If  we  apply  this  supposition  to  the  work  of  the 
man  who  is  commonly  considered  the  foremost  of 
American  humorists,  it  will  at  first  seem  not  to  fit 
at  all ;  for  there  is  a  personahty  so  mellow  and 
venerable  as  to  be  fairly  above  its  task.  That 
would  be  a  mock-respect,  however,  which  should 
feign  to  forget  what  that  task  is,  or  shrink  from 
frankly  recognizing  it  as  in  itseK  a  respectable 
rather  than  venerable  task  —  to  perfect  and  to 
communicate  the  American  joke. 

In  his  prime  Mark  Twain  was  often  more  than 
merely  funny,  but  rather  against  his  method  than 
by  it.  In  whatever  direction  or  company  he  at 
that  time  traveled,  motley  was  his  only  wear. 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  information  and  not  a 
little  wisdom  in  "  Innocents  Abroad,"  but  this  is 


90  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

not  what  the  book  was  read  for ;  indeed,  much  of 
the  information  and  the  wisdom  therein  must 
have  been  discounted  by  uncertainty  as  to  whether 
or  not  they  were  part  of  the  fun.  Later,  partly, 
perhaps,  because  his  eminence  seemed  to  him  an 
inferior,  if  not  a  bad  one,  partly  because  no  cruse 
of  jokes  can  yield  indefinitely,  he  has  shown  a 
disposition  to  adopt  a  soberer  coat.  The  attempt 
has  not  been  altogether  successful ;  he  has  kept 
on  being  funny  in  the  familiar  way,  almost  in 
spite  of  himself.  The  anonymity  of  his  historical 
romance  was  rendered  nominal  by  the  frequency 
with  which  his  French  followers  of  Jeanne  de- 
liver themselves  of  excellent  American  jokes,  and 
seem  to  feel  better  for  it.  Since  that  was  written, 
he  has  produced  a  considerable  number  of  essays 
upon  a  variety  of  sober  themes.  His  public  has 
not  known  quite  what  to  do  with  them.  Its  at- 
tention, granted  respectfully  enough,  has  been 
conscious  of  undergoing  a  sort  of  teetering  pro- 
cess, now  inclined  to  hearken  to  the  sober  philo- 
sophy of  Mr.  Clemens,  now  diverted  by  the  sudden 
reverberation  of  some  incontinent  Mark  Twain 
jest. 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  91 

There  would  be  nothing  disturbing  in  this  sit- 
uation, or  rather  the  situation  would  not  exist,  if 
the  author,  writing  under  whatever  name  or  in 
whatever  mood,  were  essentially  and  first  of  all  a 
hiunorist.  But  the  himiorist  in  Mark  Twain  is 
naturally  subordinate  to  the  jester.  That  he  pos- 
sesses the  superior  power  that  epical  narrative  of 
"  Huckleberry  Finn  "  would  abimdantly  prove. 
But  it  has  never  been  dominant ;  as  the  smiling 
interpreter  of  Mfe  his  "  genius  is  rebuked  "  by  his 
superlative  quahty  as  a  magician  of  jokes.  Inge- 
nuity rather  than  power  is  the  noticeable  charac- 
teristic of  his  later  writing.  One  is  irresistibly 
convinced  that  most  of  it  can  have  taken  very 
little  hold  of  the  author  himself. 

In  the  work  of  the  late  Frank  Stockton,  a 
much  more  delicate  humorist,  a  far  more  skill- 
ful artist  than  Mark  Twain,  the  jocose  element 
was  also  paramount,  though,  as  it  happened,  he 
cultivated  the  joke  of  situation  rather  than  of 
phrase.  But  his  demure  manner  does  not  prevent 
the  delicious  collocation  of  shark-proof  stockings 
and  Mrs.  Aleshine  from  entering  into  one's  soul 
with  all  the  poignancy  of  a  well-aimed  jest.    Nor 


92  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

can  it  be  denied  that  some  of  his  later  work 
showed  signs  of  the  same  uncertainty  of  tone 
which  we  have  just  noticed  in  that  of  Mark 
Twain.  One  recognizes  in  it,  however  unwil- 
lingly, a  lack  of  spontaneity  and  a  tameness 
which  are  not  easily  associated  with  the  author 
of  "  Eudder  Grange." 

A  curious  question  suggests  itself  here.  How 
does  it  happen  that  the  later  work  of  these  two 
prominent  American  humorists  should  exhibit 
so  marked  a  deficiency  in  the  larger  sort  of 
humor?  Are  these  to  be  taken  as  simple  in- 
stances of  decadence,  or  is  there,  after  all,  a  screw 
loose  in  our  vaunted  American  humor  ? 

Ill 
To  answer  this  question  is  to  state  more  baldly 
the  fact  suggested  above :  that  we  have  been 
content  to  let  the  reputation  of  our  humor  stand 
or  fall  by  the  quality  of  the  American  joke. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  we  like  our  jokes  better 
than  other  people's,  and  there  is  some  excuse  for 
us  if  we  fancy  that  the  gods  like  them  better, 
though  even  that  audience  appears  as  a  rule  to 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  93 

have  reserved  its  inextinguishable  laughter  for  its 
own  jokes.  It  is  because  the  English  type  of  set 
jest  appears  inferior  to  ours  that  we  have  always 
sneered  at  English  humor,  and  particularly  at  its 
greatest  repository,  "  Punch." 

But  at  its  best  the  verbal  joke  is  not  a  very 
high  manifestation  of  humor.  Happily  the  Miller 
jest-book  is  now  extinct  as  a  literary  form,  just 
as  drunkenness  is  extinct  as  a  gentlemanly  ac- 
complishment. In  one  form  or  other  the  jest  is 
bound  to  exist,  but  in  this  age  it  cannot  well 
serve  as  a  staple  food  for  the  cultivated  sense  of 
humor.  This  would  not  be  a  bad  thing  for  us  to 
bear  in  mind  when  we  get  to  comparing  our  comic 
papers  with  "  Punch,"  which  is  both  more  and  less 
than  a  comic  paper.  We  ought  to  consider  the 
amazing  number  of  genmne  contributions  to  lit- 
erature which  have  been  made  through  the  col- 
umns of  "  Punch,"  and  to  reflect  whether  our 
"  Life,"  with  its  little  dabs  of  Dolly-in-the-Con- 
servatory  verse,  its  stunted  though  suggestive 
editorial  matter,  its  not  over-brilliant  jokes  about 
the  mother-in-law  and  about  the  fiancee,  and  the 
overwhelming  prettiness  of  its  illustrations,  can 


94  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

show  much  of  a  hand  against  its  sturdy  English 
contemporary.  It  may  not  be  agreeable  to  our 
volatile  national  mind  to  concede  something  to 
English  solidity  even  in  the  matter  of  hmuor,  but 
it  is  simple  justice.  Indeed,  it  might  profitably 
be  allowed  to  dawn  upon  us  that  the  testimony 
of  "  Fliegende  Blatter  "  is  no  more  trustworthy 
than  "  Punch's ; "  that  national  taste  in  jokes 
may  vary,  but  that  humor  is  much  the  same 
everywhere.  Cervantes  was  a  Yankee,  and  so  was 
Heine,  and  so,  it  seems,  was  Shakespeare. 

We  know  very  well,  when  we  pause  to  think  of 
it,  that  some  of  the  finest  himiorists  have  been 
indifferent  jokers.  One  can  hardly  imagine  Addi- 
son setting  a  table  in  a  roar  —  or  Goldsmith, 
unless  by  inadvertence.  As  for  Dr.  Holmes,  our 
greatest  legitimate  humorist,  his  notion  of  a  set 
joke  was  mainly  restricted  to  the  manhandling  of 
the  disreputable  pun. 

In  the  meantime  the  torch  of  jocosity  is  still 
being  carried  on  by  fresh  and  unpreoccupied 
hands ;  and  if  the  line  of  eager  spectators  is  now 
mainly  at  the  level  of  the  area  windows,  that  is, 
perhaps,  not  the  affair  of  the  torch-bearer.   A 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  95 

surprising  number  of  persons  above  that  level,  it 
must  be  said,  appear  to  take  satisfaction  in  the 
quasi-humorous  work  of  such  "  humorists "  as 
Mr.  John  Kendrick  Bangs.  It  is  work  which 
deserves  consideration  because  it  represents  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum  of  "  American  humor."  It 
consists  in  a  sort  of  end-man  volley  of  quips, 
yarns,  exaggerations,  and  paradoxes.  A  book 
produced  by  this  method  cannot  be  deeply  hu- 
morous. It  is  not  the  outcome  of  an  abiding 
sense  of  comedy  value,  and  naturally  bears  much 
the  same  relation  to  a  veritable  work  of  humor 
that  a  bunch  of  firecrackers  in  action  bears  to 
the  sun.  The  true  humorist  cannot  help  concern- 
ing himself  with  some  sort  of  interpretation  of 
life :  Mr.  Bangs  can.  His  folly  is  not  a  stalk- 
ing-horse under  the  presentation  of  which  he 
shoots  his  wit,  but  an  end  in  itself.  There  could 
be  no  better  illustration  of  the  difference  between 
the  jocose  and  the  humorous  than  a  comj)arison 
of  one  of  Mr.  Bangs's  farces  with  one  of  Mr. 
Howells's.  The  younger  writer  seems  in  effect  to 
represent  the  survival  of  a  school  of  facetiousness, 
now  happily  moribund,  which  had  some  standing 


96  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

during  the  last  century,  in  England  as  well  as  in 
America.  Puns,  elaborate  ironies,  fantastic  para- 
doxes, aU  manner  of  facetiae  were  good  form  from 
the  early  days  of  Christopher  North  to  the  end  of 
the  Dickens  vogue.  In  the  England  of  our  own  day 
jocosity  has  been  for  the  most  part  remanded  to  its 
proper  place  as  the  servant  and  not  the  divinity  of 
the  humorous  machine.  In  our  ears  the  English 
jest  is  no  better  than  such  as  it  is ;  which  we  do 
not  believe  of  ours  :  so  that  we  continue  to  give  lit- 
erary credit  to  a  function  which  is  merely  human. 
We  have  a  right  to  use  a  Mr.  Bangs,  say,  for  our 
private  consumption,  as  a  man  may  choose  to 
smoke  a  brand  of  tobacco  which  he  knows  to  be 
bad,  and  cannot  reconunend  to  his  friends;  but 
we  may  properly  be  carefid,  too,  not  to  confound 
qualities,  not  to  yield  to  mere  facetiousness  the 
honors  which  belong  to  humor. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  in  this  day  of  smiles 
across  the  sea  the  boundary  line  between  na- 
tional methods  of  joking  even  is  not  always  indis- 
putable. Jerome  K.  Jerome,  for  instance,  belongs 
fairly  to  our  school  of  jocoseness ;  and  "  Three 
Men  in  a  Boat "  was  popular  with  us  because  he 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  97 

applied  our  method  to  English  conditions.  The 
village  and  seafaring  tales  of  Mr.  W.  W.  Jacobs 
ai'e  more  plainly  insidar  in  quality,  but  in  the 
delicious  and  milabored  absurdity  of  his  plots 
and  the  whimsicality  of  his  dialogue  he  strongly 
resembles  Mr.  Stockton  among  the  jesters. 

So  far  as  pure  humor  is  concerned,  there  has 
never  been  a  shadow  of  a  boundary  line  between 
England  and  America.  Different  as  they  are  in 
personality  and  in  the  total  effect  of  their  work, 
what  radical  distinction  in  mere  quality  of  hu- 
mor is  there  between  Mr.  Cable  and  Mr.  Barrie  ? 
Was  it  not  the  same  genial  sense  of  the  delicate 
alternating  currents  of  the  feminine  tempera- 
ment which  produced  both  Jess  and  Aurore  Nan- 
canou  ?  And  is  not  Fielding's  humor  as  much  at 
home  in  America  as  Dr.  Holmes's  in  England? 

IV 

But  the  domain  of  humor  is  not  infrequently 
subdivided  on  other  than  national  hues.  If  there 
is  any  distinction  of  sex  upon  which  man  prides 
himself,  it  is  his  superior  sense  of  humor.  When 
the  matter  comes  to  analysis,  it  may  appear  that 


98  AMERICAN   HUMOR 

the  distinction  is  a  somewhat  narrow  one ;  that 
the  question  of  the  jest  is  once  more  the  real 
question  in  point.  There  is  a  certain  sort  of 
verbal  nonsense,  as  there  are  forms  of  the  prac- 
tical joke,  which  induces  a  masculine  hysteria 
while  it  commands  only  tolerance  from  the  other 
sex.  I  think  men  are  often  unfair  when  after 
such  experiments,  painful  enough  (for  what  is 
more  disheartening  than  to  angle  for  laughter 
and  catch  civility),  they  accuse  the  woman  of 
not  seeing  the  joke.  She  does  see  it,  but  it  does 
not  appeal  to  her  as  the  funniest  thing  in  the 
world.  She  has  heard  other  jokes,  and  is  igno- 
rant of  the  necessity  for  all  this  side-holding  and 
slapping  on  the  back.  She  therefore  finishes  her 
tea  in  quietude  of  spirit  long  before  the  last 
reminiscent  detonations  have  ceased  to  echo  in 
the  masculine  throat. 

But  it  is  a  dull  and  hasty  guess  to  hazard  that 
because  of  this  difference  in  taste  Miss  Austen's 
sex  is  deficient  in  humor.  There  are  women  now- 
adays—  there  have  always  been,  one  suspects, 
since  new  womanhood  is  as  old  as  everything  else 
under  the  sun  —  who  have  so  far  cultivated  the 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  99 

masculine  point  of  view  as  to  have  actually  come 
into  possession  of  the  masculine  sense  of  the  joke. 
But,  as  George  Marlow  says  in  a  very  different 
connection,  "  they  are  of  us."  It  is  the  habit  of 
such  women  in  writing  to  be  especially  satirical 
in  deahng  with  their  own  sex.  A  mere  man  is 
not  sure  that  he  enjoys  this  humorous  exposure 
of  the  feminine  point  of  view.  He  admires  the 
idea  of  a  neat  reticence  veiling  the  operations  of 
the  feminine  mind  and  heart.  It  is  right  for  man 
to  blurt,  but  too  free  speech  in  woman  connotes 
a  certain  boldness,  and  the  glory  of  a  woman  is 
otherwise  conditioned.  A  true  woman's  sense  of 
humor  is  ordinarily  less  spasmodic,  probably  less 
acute,  than  a  man's,  but  (though  a  man  may  be 
a  little  ashamed  of  thinking  so,  as  he  might  be  of 
believing  in  woman's  suffrage)  hardly  less  real  or 
less  fruitful.  A  very  large  part  of  the  work  done 
in  legitimate  humor  during  the  past  few  years  by 
Americans  has  been  done  by  women. 

V 

If  there  is  a  characteristic  form  in  which  the 
American's  sense  of  humor  is  inclined  to  express 


100  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

itself,  it  is  probably  satire,  tbe  form  wliich  lies 
closest  upon  the  borderland  of  wit.  And  our 
talent  for  satire  is  still  further  defined  by  our 
preference  for  the  method  of  the  interlocutor. 
The  "  Biglow  Papers  "  established  a  sort  of  canon 
by  which  our  work  in  this  field  will  long  be 
judged.  We  have  done  nothing  of  late  in  satiri- 
cal verse,  to  be  sure,  while  much  has  been  done 
in  England  —  if  indeed  this  impression  is  not  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  newspaper  provides  our  only 
market  for  such  wares.  But  it  can  hardly  escape 
notice  that  in  other  respects  our  recent  successful 
experiments  in  satire  have  held  to  the  method  of 
Lowell  and  Artemus  Ward:  the  expression  of 
wisdom  in  dialect  or  in  the  vernacular. 

I  do  not  think  justice  has  been  done  to  the 
hterary  merit  of  the  Dooley  books.  This  may 
be  due  to  the  copiousness  with  which  the  sage  of 
Archey  Road  has  poured  forth  his  opinions  ;  or, 
again,  it  may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  so  clean  and 
acceptable  a  vin  du  pays  has  needed  no  bush. 
Critics,  it  may  be  supposed,  are  useful  in  point- 
ing out  excellences  which  most  of  us  are  not 
likely  to  perceive :    but   everybody  understands 


AMERICAN  HUMOR  101 

Mr.  Dooley.  I  am  not  so  sure  that  the  latter  sup- 
position is  true.  Much  of  the  Dooley  satire  seems 
so  good  that  it  must,  in  part,  escape  the  compre- 
hension of  many  readers  who  are  convulsed  by 
the  Dooley  phraseology. 

That  phraseology  in  itself  is  a  remarkable 
thing.  Nothing  is  harder  to  catch  than  the  Irish 
idiom,  notliing  harder  to  suggest  on  paper  than 
the  Ii'ish  brogue.  We  are  only  too  famihar  with 
the  sham  bedad  and  bejabers  dialect,  of  some 
commercial  value  to  writers  of  fiction,  but  not 
otherwise  existent.  Some  readers  will  have 
noticed  what  painful  work  has  been  made  of  it 
lately  by  other  popular  wi'iters.  But  Mr.  Dooley 
—  one  can  hardly  elsewhere,  unless  from  the 
mouth  of  Kipling's  Mulvaney,  hear  so  mellow 
and  lilting  a  Hibernian  voice  as  this.  The  papers 
must  have  been  written  -^ath  care,  although  they 
have  appeared  very  often.  It  is  astonishing,  in 
view  of  the  great  range  of  theme  involved,  and 
the  periodicity  of  their  publication,  that  there  is 
so  little  uuevenness  in  them.  They  are  practi- 
cally monologues,  for  the  occasional  introductory 
word  is  of  the  briefest,  and  the  supernumerary 


102  AMERICAN  HUMOR 

Mr.  Hennessey  serves  simply  as  the  necessary 
concrete  audience.  Mr.  Dooley's  popularity  is 
well  earned.  One  is  almost  afraid  to  praise  him 
lest  the  suspicion  that  he  is  approved  by  literary 
persons  should  "  queer  "  him  with  the  populace. 
With  all  his  pure  Irishness,  he  is  pure  American, 
too ;  and  his  commentary  upon  current  events, 
with  its  alternating  simplicity  and  shrewdness, 
its  avoidance  of  sentimentality,  and  its  real 
patriotism,  probably  represents,  very  much  as 
Hosea  Biglow  represented,  the  sober  sense,  which 
is  the  humorous  sense,  of  the  people.  This  union 
of  individual  and  representative  humor  must  be 
the  basis  of  whatever  claim  can  be  made  for  the 
permanent  value  of  Mr.  Dooley. 

But  this  is  enough  to  give  his  creator  a  place 
among  the  humorists.  A  vein  of  jests  is  soon 
worked  out,  but  humor  is  a  perennial  fount.  It 
is  a  quality  rather  than  a  feat,  an  atmosphere  of 
comedy  rather  than  a  mainspring  of  farce.  The 
advance  of  years  is  too  much  for  the  cleverness 
of  the  funny  man,  while  the  humorist  is  fruit- 
ful to  the  end,  and  after. 


FOR  THE  YOUNG 


"FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

It  was  only  a  century  ago,  as  everybody  remem- 
bers, that  literary  sucklings  were  nurtured  on  the 
Bible,  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  "  Paradise  Lost," 
and  "  Fox's  Book  of  Martyrs."  This  was  not 
in  all  respects  an  admirable  diet  for  readers  of 
any  age,  though  it  had  its  good  points.  There  is 
a  chance  that  an  imaginative  child  may  be  helped 
toward  a  taste  for  good  hterature  by  having  to 
amuse  himself  with  that  or  nothing ;  he  may  de- 
light in  the  rhythm  of  great  poetry  or  the  stately 
march  of  great  prose  before  he  can  get  an  ink- 
ling as  to  what  it  is  all  about.  But  the  situation 
is  hardly  imaginable  nowadays,  since  children 
have  plenty  of  reading  to  amuse  themselves  with 
besides  the  best.  They  are  no  longer  required 
to  be  seen  and  not  heard,  or  to  put  up  with  the 
scraps  of  literature  which  may  fall  from  the 
wholesome  (that  is,  tiresome)  table  of  their 
elders.    A  much  pleasanter  bill  of  fare  is  being 


106  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

provided  for  them,  and  it  is  confidently  expected 
that  the  early  courses  of  sugar-water  and  lollipop 
wiU  gently  and  kindergartenly  induce  an  appe- 
tite for  the  ensuing  roast.  It  seems  that  our  guilt 
has  come  home  to  us.  We  have  not  been  treat- 
ing the  child  properly  for  the  past  ten  thousand 
years  or  so,  and  we  are  in  a  creditable  hurry  to 
make  it  up  to  him,  at  the  expense  of  our  own 
rights  if  necessary  ;  and  we  do  books,  among  other 
things,  in  his  honor,  by  way  of  propitiating  him. 


Our  earlier  attempts  were  pretty  clumsy,  we 
must  admit.  When  it  occurred  to  us  that  the 
child  was  a  person,  we  perceived  first  that  he 
must  be  worth  preaching  to.  We  hastened  to 
provide  him  with  Guides  for  the  Young  Chris- 
tian, and  Maiden  Monitors,  and  such ;  and  later, 
relenting  a  little,  we  dechned  to  the  secular  fri- 
volity of  the  Eollo  books  and  "  Sandford  and 
Merton."  One  cannot  easily  forget  Rollo's  ad- 
venture with  the  woodpile,  the  famous  journey 
in  the  carryall,  and  the  gay  badinage  (^passini) 
of  Jonas,  that  hired  man  without  fear  and  with- 


"FOR  THE  YOUNG"  107 

out  reproach.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  child, 
or  a  considerable  part  of  him,  enjoyed  this  con- 
cession, paltry  as  it  now  seems;  and  presently 
his  dutifulness  was  rewarded  by  such  books  as 
"  Water  Babies,"  "  Tom  Brown  at  Rugby,"  and 
"Alice  in  Wonderland,"  which  perfectly  estab- 
Hshed  his  right  to  be  amused  as  well  as  in- 
structed. With  Eollo,  the  roundabout,  and  the 
pantalet,  disappeared  a  whole  school  of  tradi- 
tions and  conventions  about  the  child.  Since 
then  affairs  have  gone  very  smoothly  for  him ; 
the  rill  of  literature  for  children  has  grown  to 
a  torrent,  and  there  is  no  saying  that  it  may  not 
soon  grow  to  a  deluge.  The  number  and  charac- 
ter of  current  books  advertised  to  be  for  the 
young  is  a  little  appalling ;  but  there  is  no  use 
in  grumbling  about  such  a  condition  ;  probably 
the  wisest  course  for  the  observer  is  to  cultivate 
an  attitude  of  resigned  and  friendly  speculation. 
What  are  collectively  known  as  books  for  the 
young  appear  to  be  pretty  easily  classifiable. 
There  are  books  for  urchins  and  books  for  strip- 
lings, to  begin  with  ;  there  are,  further,  books 
about   adults   for   the   young,  books   about  the 


108  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

young  for  the  young,  books  about  the  young  for 
adults,  and  books  which,  whatever  they  are  about, 
are  equally  good  for  readers  of  all  ages.  Most 
of  the  best  books  nominally  awarded  to  childish 
readers  evidently  belong  to  this  final  class. 
"  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales,"  "  Eobinson  Crusoe,"  the 
wonder  tales  of  Hans  Andersen  and  Hawthorne, 
the  "  Child's  Garden  of  Verses,"  "  Alice  in  Won- 
derland," —  books  like  these  obviously  belong  not 
simply  to  the  nursery,  but  to  literature,  and  are 
not  made  worthless  by  the  addition  even  of  a  cubit 
to  the  stature  of  the  reader.  It  must  be  an  object  of 
interest  in  judging  current  books  for  the  young  to 
hazard  a  guess  as  to  their  eligibility  for  this  class. 
Mr.  Kipling's  "  Just  So  Stories  "  is  among  the 
few  recent  original  books  for  children  whose 
standing  in  this  connection  appears  to  be  fairly 
sure.  It  does  for  very  little  children  much  what 
the  "  Jungle  Books  "  did  for  older  ones.  It  is 
artfully  artless,  in  its  themes,  in  its  repetitions, 
in  its  habitual  limitation,  and  occasional  abey- 
ance, of  adult  humor.  It  strikes  a  child  as  the 
kind  of  yarn  his  father  or  uncle  might  have  spun 
if  he  had  just  happened  to  think  of  it ;  and  it 


"FOR  THE   YOUNG"  109 

has,  like  all  good  fairy-business,  a  sound  core  of 
philosophy.  Children  might  like  the  book  just  as 
well,  at  first,  if  it  lacked  this  mellowness  of  tone, 
but  grown  people  would  not  like  it  at  aU ;  and 
when  a  book  .for  children  bores  grown  people,  its 
days  are  numbered.  One  of  the  dangerous  things 
about  giving  children  unguided  indulgence  in 
chUd-books  is  that  they  are  prepared  to  relish, 
for  the  moment,  such  inferior  stuff.  A  normal 
child  has  no  difficulty  in  making  what  seem  to 
him  to  be  bricks  out  of  the  scantiest  and  mouldi- 
est  of  straw-heaps.  He  wiU  listen  to  some  maud- 
lin rambling  mammy's  tale  with  the  same  rapture 
which  a  proud  father  may  have  fancied  could  be 
produced  only  by  his  own  ingenious  and  imagina- 
tive fictions.  AU  stories  are  grist  to  the  mill  of 
infancy  ;  but  it  is  true,  nevertheless,  that  very 
few  of  them  are  worth  grinding. 

n 

There  is,  in  short,  no  separate  standard  of  taste 
by  which  to  determine  the  value  of  books  writ- 
ten for  children.  To  be  of  permanent  use,  they 
must  possess  literary  quality ;  that  is,  they  must 


110  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

be  whole-souled,  broad,  mature  in  temper,  if  not 
in  theme  or  manner.  This  truth  is  not  always  ob- 
served by  the  fond  adult  buyer.  The  given  book 
seems,  he  admits,  rather  silly ;  but  he  supposes 
that  to  be  a  part  of  its  character  as  a  "  Juve- 
nile." A  theory  seems  to  be  building  up  that 
the  attribute  of  ripe  humor  which  is  wisdom  is 
rather  wasted  upon  a  book  for  children ;  that  a 
boy  knows  a  parson  and  recognizes  a  clown,  but  is 
only  puzzled  by  the  betwixts  and  betweens  of  the 
class  to  which  most  of  humanity  belongs.  It  is 
often  asserted  that  a  child's  sense  of  humor  is 
mainly  confined  to  a  sense  of  the  ridiculous.  That 
is  true  of  his  sense  of  a  joke ;  but  children  have 
never  been  proved  insusceptible  to  the  warmth  of 
true  humor,  though  they  may  have  been  quite  un- 
conscious of  susceptibility.  In  the  meantime,  they 
are  ready  enough  to  put  up  with  its  absence ;  and 
they  find  at  hand  a  type  of  fiction  built  upon  an 
artificial  code  of  sentiment  and  morals.  Children's 
magazines  and  libraries  are  full  of  stories  written 
according  to  this  code,  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  which  is  the  prescription  of  certain  things  to 
do  and  not  to  do :  never  to  cheat  in  examination, 


"FOR  THE   YOUNG"  111 

always  to  be  grateful  to  your  parents,  never  to 
pretend  to  have  money  when  you  have  n't,  and 
always  to  knock  under  to  authority.  By  way  of 
making  up  for  all  these  deprivations,  you  are  (if 
you  are  a  genuine  school  hero  or  heroine)  allowed 
to  make  precocious  love  to  the  prettiest  girl  or  the 
handsomest  boy  in  school.  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  there  was  something  of  this  in  Miss  Alcott. 
Pier  successors  and  imitators  have,  according  to 
the  habit  of  imitators,  exaggerated  the  defects  of 
her  method  and  her  work. 

It  is  odd,  the  name  of  Miss  Alcott  reminds  us, 
that  we  should  now  have  not  only  books  for  chil- 
dren and  books  for  grown-ups,  but  books  for  boys 
and  books  for  girls.  "Why  not,  by  the  same  token, 
novels  for  men  and  novels  for  women  ?  The  truth 
is,  there  is  a  sad  season,  between  "  the  codling 
and  the  apple,"  when  the  interests  of  youths  and 
maidens  do  so  diverge  that  they  prefer  to  go,  for 
a  time,  their  several  ways.  If  a  boy  of  twelve, 
for  instance,  is  going  to  read  about  persons  of  his 
own  age,  he  wants  to  hear  about  interesting  per- 
sons, —  that  is,  other  boys.  Moreover,  he  wiU 
wish  it  understood  that  they  are  to  be  real  boys, 


112  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

—  boys'  boys.  When  Miss  Alcott  wrote  "  Eight 
Cousins,"  she  spoiled  the  whole  thing,  from  the 
masculine  point  of  view,  by  making  the  one  girl- 
cousin  the  leader  of  "  the  bunch."  It  is  pleasant, 
doubtless,  to  behold  seven  able-bodied  boys  dan- 
cing attendance  upon  one  slender  red-cheeked 
girl;  but  any  boy  can  imagine  a  hundred  plea- 
santer  things  than  that.  What 's  the  matter  with 
war,  or  life  on  the  plains,  or  getting  after  buried 
treasure?  Those  are  the  things  a  fellow  would 
Hke  to  do,  while  the  red-cheeked  girls  are  playing 
with  their  paper  dolls  and  making  eyes  at  each 
other,  for  practice. 

With  this  bias  lingering  in  their  minds,  those 
who  have  not  been  boys  too  long  ago  must  note 
with  satisfaction  that  the  story  of  daring  adven- 
ture and  hairbreadth  escape  continues  to  be  writ- 
ten and  read.  It  is  reassuring,  moreover,  to  know 
that  Scott  and  Cooper  are  still  read  by  the  fire- 
side in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  have  to  be 
"  studied  "  in  the  classroom,  and  in  spite  of  aU 
the  modern  "  Restaurateurs,"  as  Carlyle  woiild 
have  caUed  them.  Those  old  narratives  have  at 
least  the  advantage  of  possessing  some  foimdation 


"  FOR  THE  YOUNG  "  113 

in  the  actual  experience  of  a  probable  man,  instead 
of  being  constructed  to  display  the  mythical  ex- 
ploits of  an  impossible  boy. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  younger  generation 
still  reads  "  Handy  Andy  "  and  "  Rory  O'More  " 
with  an  added  fillip  of  joy  due  to  the  conviction 
that  it  would  be  more  virtuous  to  be  reading 
"  Ivanhoe  "  or  "  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables." 
Possibly  the  cheap  historical  novel  and  the  works 
of  one  Henty  are  now  perused  in  that  spirit  — 
not  so  profitably,  it  is  fair  to  assume.  One  of 
these  guilty  readers,  at  least,  has  been  not  a  little 
surprised  on  rereading  these  and  other  stories  by 
Samuel  Lover  to  learn  how  little  reason  there 
was  for  those  youthful  qualms.  Not  that  the 
merry  Irishman  comes  anywhere  near  Scott  or 
Hawthorne  or  the  other  great  masters  of  fiction, 
but  beside  the  farcical  activity  for  which  the  boy 
values,  or  once  valued  him,  there  is  a  deal  of  sound 
literary  stuff  in  his  work. 

Outside  of  fiction,  a  great  deal  of  valuable  work 
has  been  done  recently  in  the  way  of  providing 
simple  biography  and  historical  narrative  for 
boys.    Ambition  is  a  form  of  selfishness,  no  doubt, 


114  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

and  war  is  a  curse,  or  whatever ;  but  we  like 
to  have  our  sons  know  about  Achilles  and  Nel- 
son and  Ethan  AUen,  for  aU  that.  Altogether, 
one  may  feel  that  the  strenuous  taste  of  boyhood 
is  being  quite  as  conscientiously  catered  to  as  the 
sentimental  taste  of  girlhood.  It  is  awkward  to 
be  a  miss  or  a  hobbledehoy,  for  all  concerned,  but 
these  are  experiences  of  the  moment;  a  little 
while,  and  one  has  become  more  strenuous  and 
the  other  more  sentimental,  and  lo!  they  are  man 
and  woman,  ready  to  accept  life  and  art  upon 
approximately  equal  terms. 

ni 

If  among  books  for  the  young  some  are  unpal- 
atable to  grown  people  on  account  of  their  total 
lack  of  humor,  others  (and  there  are  many  of 
them)  are  too  sharply  humorous  or  too  subtly  sen- 
timental to  appeal  to  children.  Their  only  claim 
to  classification  among  children's  books  consists 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  about  children.  This,  of 
course,  does  not  really  qualify  them.  There  are 
many  grown-ups  who  are  able  to  heave  a  sigh  and 
may  be  able  to  drop  a  tear  over  the  verses  of 


"FOR  THE  YOUNG"  115 

Field  and  Riley.  Mr.  Riley  may  fairly  be  called 
the  threiiodist  of  departed  childhood.  One  grows, 
perhaps,  a  little  tired  of  this  mourning  for  lost 
joys ;  manhood  has  its  compensations,  after  all, 
and  the  state  of  innocence  is  an  excellent  point 
of  departure,  rather  than  a  goal,  to  "  such  a  being 
as  man,  in  such  a  world  as  the  present."  Of 
course  there  is  humor  as  weU  as  sentiment  in 
these  reminiscences  : 

"  Calf  was  in  the  back-lot ; 
Clover  in  the  red ; 
Bluebird  in  the  pear-tree  ; 

Pigeons  on  the  shed ; 
Tom  a-chargiu'  twenty  pins 

At  the  bam  ;  and  Dan 
Spraddled  out  just  like  '  The 
Injarubber-Man !  '  " 

Most  of  this  verse  is  written  in  the  peculiar 
child  dialect  which  Mr.  Riley  discovered,  or 
evolved,  long  ago ;  a  speech  in  which  "  just " 
becomes  "  ist,"  "  that "  becomes  "  'at,"  "  was  "  be- 
comes "  wuz,"  and  so  on.  Experiment  does  not 
indicate  that  either  the  form  or  the  mood  of  such 
verse  appeals  strongly  to  children.  A  similar 
exception   must   be  taken  to  much   of    Eugene 


116  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

Field's  poetry  about  children,  though  in  a  few 
of  his  songs  he  does  really  speak  directly  to  the 
young,  and  not  merely  to  lovers  of  the  young. 

The  classic  book  of  English  verse  for  children 
is,  of  course,  the  "  Child's  Garden,"  probably  the 
purest  and  ripest  expression  of  Stevenson's  genius. 
No  one  has  written  so  like  a  child,  or  more  like  a 
man ;  and  consequently  no  book  about  children 
(except  "  Alice  in  Wonderland  ")  is  so  accept- 
able to  all  ages.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  a  child 
feels  the  gentle  irony  of  many  of  these  verses, 
though  he  listens  with  a  serious  face ;  what  a 
clear  sense  he  has  of  the  delicious  priggishness 
of  "  The  Whole  Duty  of  Children  :  " 

"  A  child  should  always  say  what 's  true, 
And  speak  when  he  is  spoken  to, 
And  behave  mannerly  at  table  : 
At  least,  as  far  as  he  is  able ;  " 

or  of  the  whimsical  vagueness  of  the  "Happy 
Thought :  " 

"  The  world  is  so  full  of  a  number  of  things, 
I  'm  sure  we  should  all  be  as  happy  as  kings." 

There  is  hardly  a  poem  in  the  collection  which 
does  not  express  some  true  childish  mood,  as  the 


"FOR  THE  YOUNG"  117 

child  himseK  feels  it,  and  not  as  it  looks  in  retro- 
spect. 

Happily,  not  even  the  best  of  juvenile  poetry 
can  do  for  children  everything  which  poetry  can 
do.  Several  admirable  collections  of  great  verse 
which  is  intelligible  to  young  people  have  been 
made  in  the  past,  collections  like  Mr.  Henley's 
"  Lyra  Heroica,"  and  the  "  Heart  of  Oak  Series  " 
edited  by  Professor  Norton.  Such  books  of  poetry 
will  be  used  gratefully  by  many  people  who  have 
believed  in  reading  good  verse  to  children,  but 
have  distrusted  their  own  judgment  in  selecting 
the  right  thing. 

One  is  surprised  in  looking  over  the  most  popu- 
lar books  about  children  to  see  how  few  of  them 
are  really  capable  of  being  enjoyed  by  children. 
There,  to  be  sure,  was  "  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy," 
which  was  fit  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  sentimental 
and  the  humorless  of  any  age ;  perhaps  we  had 
better  speak  of  the  best  rather  than  the  most 
popular  books.  Mrs.  Ewing  in  "  Jackanapes  " 
and  "  The  Story  of  a  Short  Life,"  and  Mrs.  Wig- 
gin  in  "  Timothy's  Quest "  and  "  The  Birds' 
Christmas   Carol,"  seem   to   have  achieved   the 


118  "FOR  THE  YOUNG" 

better  sort  of  balance.  Miss  Daskam  has  solved, 
or  avoided,  the  problem  of  her  audience  by  pro- 
ducing two  kinds  of  story  about  children,  a  va- 
riety like  "  The  Madness  of  Philip  "  for  grown- 
ups, and  a  variety  like  "  The  Imp  and  the  Angel " 
for  babes. 

Elsewhere  the  question  has  been  decided  frankly 
in  favor  of  the  adult  reader,  though  there  are 
cases  in  which  children  manage  to  enjoy  in  some 
manner  what  was  meant  for  their  elders.  A  boy, 
for  instance,  will  devour  tales  like  "  Tom  Sawyer  " 
or  "  Huckleberry  Finn,"  though  he  cannot  under- 
stand their  real  merit  as  studies  of  boy-charac- 
ter. As  narratives  of  dehghtfully  meaningless 
depravity  they  have  been  excluded,  not  unreason- 
ably, from  more  than  one  public  library.  The 
adult  intelligence  is  necessary  to  understand  them, 
far  more  necessary  than  with  many  books  com- 
monly read  by  adults  which  have  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  children.  In  the  "  Huck  Finn  " 
class  one  might  include  Mr.  KipHng's  "  Stalky," 
if  one  were  sure  that  the  disagreeable  little  rascals 
who  figure  in  that  tale  can  be  supposed  to  mean 
anything  even  to  the  full-grown  intelligence. 


"FOR  THE  YOUNG"  119 

There  is  no  doubt  on  this  score  as  to  the  vakio 
of  Mr.  Howells's  books  about  boys.  In  his  "  Boy's 
Town  "  he  registered,  professedly  for  young  read- 
ers, a  series  of  minute  and  sharply  defined  after- 
impressions  of  boyhood  as  he  had  in  his  own  per- 
son experienced  it.  His  latest  book  is  the  story  of 
a  particular  boy  in  the  "  Boy's  Town."  It  has  an 
admirable  moral  (if  that  were  important),  but  I 
doubt  if  an  ordinary  boy  would  be  quite  sure 
what  it  is.  He  would  enjoy  the  book,  but  the 
very  subtlest,  finest  merit  of  it  would  be  beyond 
him.  The  writer,  in  short,  employs  his  favorite 
instrument  of  cool  and  dry  irony  to  excellent 
effect,  for  grown-up  readers.  The  style  is  happily 
coUoquial,  now  and  then  slipping  into  l)oy  syntax 
and  vocabulary ;  and  it  would  be  hard  to  find 
elsewhere  so  veracious  a  picture  of  the  whimsical 
contrarieties  and  unwilling  compunctions  of  boy- 
nature,  unless  in  that  remarkable  and,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  unforgotten  series  of  boy-studies,  "  The 
Court  of  BoyviUe."  The  books  of  Mr.  Kenneth 
Grahame,  which  have  now  been  given  what  might 
well  be  their  final  form,  are  in  a  different  vein. 
Mr.  Grahame  has  the  advantage  of  writing  con- 


120  "FOR   THE   YOUNG" 

fessedly  for  his  contemporaries.  His  stjde  is  rather 
ornate  than  simple,  and  he  remembers  his  child- 
hood with  a  tenderness  of  personal  association 
which  he  does  not  try  to  hide.  His  memory  has 
more  subtlety  than  that  of  Mr.  Riley,  and  more 
warmth  than  that  of  Mr.  Howells. 

If  such  work  as  this  is  the  writing  of  a  man  for 
men,  so  much  the  better  for  men,  and,  indirectly 
at  least,  for  the  children  of  men. 


POETRY   AND   COMMONPLACE 


rOETEY  AND  COMMONPLACE 

"  Only  a  staff  cut  from  Soj)hoclean  timber  will 
support  your  lonely  dreamer  as  lie  makes  his  way 
over  the  marl,"  wrote  an  accomplished  American 
scholar  not  long  ago ;  "  but  the  common  citizen, 
who  does  most  of  the  world's  work,  and  who  has 
more  to  do  with  the  future  of  poetry  than  a  critic 
will  concede,  finds  his  account  in  certain  smooth, 
didactic,  and  mainly  cheerful  verses  which  appear 
in  the  syndicate  newspapers,  and  wiU  never  attain 
a  magazine  or  an  anthology.  If  singing  throngs 
keep  rhythm  alive,  it  is  this  sort  of  poets  that 
must  both  make  and  mend  the  paths  of  genius." 
The  critic  is  not  advancing  a  new  gospel  of 
doggerel  or  a  defense  of  the  slipshod.  He  is  con- 
sidering poetry  as  a  scientific  fact,  as  "  emotional 
rhythmic  utterance,"  and  striving  to  emphasize 
the  significance  of  that  utterance  in  its  ruder 
forms.  His  argument,  therefore,  seems  to  ap- 
proach an  apology  for  the  commonplace.    Indeed, 


124  POETRY   AND   COMMONPLACE 

he  is  frank  in  accepting  the  word  as  applicable 
to  the  best  poetry,  if  it  is  applicable  at  all. 
"  Commonplace  is  a  poor  word,"  he  says.  "  Hor- 
ace gives  one  nothing  else." 

One  wishes  to  be  sure  that  there  is  reason  for 
throwing  such  overwhelming  stress  upon  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  social  element  in  poetry.  When 
we  have  admitted  that  some  sort  of  emotional 
rhythmic  utterance  has  always  been  essential  to 
the  popular  comfort,  and  when  we  have  deter- 
mined by  the  method  which  Mr.  Gummere  sug- 
gests that  the  instinct  for  such  utterance  is  not 
likely  to  grow  dull  with  time,  shall  we  have  even 
paved  the  way  for  proof  that  great  poetry  will 
continue  to  be  pro.duced  ?  Or  when  we  have  gone 
the  length  of  historical  analysis  to  prove  that 
"  Lycidas,  as  a  poem,  is  the  outcome  of  emotion 
in  long  reaches  of  social  progress,"  shall  we  have 
discovered  some  new  truth  about  the  poem  or 
about  the  poetic  function  ?  Necessarily  the  great 
poet  conserves  and  epitomizes  and  perfects;  that 
is  why  he  is  great.  And  that,  since  he  implies, 
and  acts  as  spokesman  for,  a  thousand  smaller 
voices  heard  only  by  a  few  and  for  a  day,  is  why 


POETRY   AND   COMMONPLACE  125 

we  still  find  meaning  even  in  "  those  old  hysterics 
about  genius,"  which  Mr.  Gmnmere  disdains ; 
and  why  we  find  it  unnecessary  to  refer  every 
poem,  gi-eat  or  small,  to  whatever  mass  of  data  in 
"  concrete  sociology." 

We  may  turn  for  reassurance  to  certain  well- 
remembered  passages  in  the  Oxford  lectures  of 
Mr.  W.  J.  Courthope,  a  distinguished  modern 
expositor  of  classical  criticism.  "  Poetry,"  he 
says,  "  is  the  art  which  produces  pleasure  for  the 
imagination  by  imitating  human  actions,  thoughts, 
and  passions,  in  metrical  language."  It  must, 
however,  produce  pleasure  not  for  the  coterie  or 
the  class,  or  even  the  people  as  a  whole,  but 
"  pleasure  which  can  be  felt  by  what  is  best  in 
the  people  as  a  whole  .  .  .  pleasure  such  as  has 
been  produced  by  one  generation  of  great  poets 
after  another  whose  work  still  moves  in  the  reader 
wonder  and  dehght."  Naturally,  therefore,  "the 
sole  authorities  in  the  art  of  poetry  are  the  great 
classical  poets  of  the  world."  This  view  of  poetry 
by  no  means  ignores  its  fundamental  relation  to- 
ward society.  "  As  the  end  of  art  is  to  produce 
pleasure,  poets  and  aU  other  artists  must  take 


126  POETRY  AND   COMMONPLACE 

into  account  alike  the  constitution  of  the  human 
mind  and  the  circumstances  of  the  society  which 
it  is  their  business  to  please."  But  this  truth, 
stated  without  qualification,  may  easily  mislead  : 
"  Popular  taste  has,  no  doubt,  a  foundation  in 
Nature.  .  .  .  But  the  imrefined  instinct  of  the 
multitude  is,  as  a  I'ule,  in  favor  of  what  is  obvious 
and  superficial :  impatient  of  reflection,  it  is  at- 
tracted by  the  loud  colors  and  the  commonplace 
sentiment  which  readily  strike  the  senses  or  the 
affections.  Observe  the  popular  songs  in  the  Mu- 
sic Halls,  the  pictorial  advertisements  on  the 
hoardings,  the  books  on  the  railway  stalls,  the 
lists  in  the  circulating  libraries ;  from  these  may 
be  divined  the  level  to  which  the  public  taste  is 
capable  of  rising  by  its  own  untrained  perception. 
That  which  is  natural  in  such  taste  is  also  vulgar  ; 
and  if  vulgar  Nature  is  to  be  the  standard  of  Art, 
nothing  but  a  versatile  mediocrity  of  invention  is 
any  longer  possible."  The  classical  critic,  that  is, 
would  see  no  hope  for  poetry  in  the  mere  survival 
of  a  popular  susceptibility  for  rhythm.  Yet  if  he 
does  not  spare  contempt  for  the  commonplace  and 
vulgar,  he  is  at  great  pains  to  make  clear  the 


POETRY   AND   COMMONPLACE  127 

importance  of  the  imivcrsal  element  in  poetry : 
"■  The  real  superiority  of  the  painter  or  the  poet, 
if  we  measure  by  the  work  of  the  highest  excel- 
lence, lies  ...  in  the  ability  to  find  expression 
for  imaginative  ideas  of  nature  floatmg  unex- 
pressed in  the  general  mind."  "  That  secret  of 
enduring  poetical  life  lies  in  individualizing 
the  universal,  not  in  universalizing  the  indi- 
vidual." 

From  this  point  of  view,  one  reflects,  what  does 
Mr.  Gummere's  "  communal  song  "  mean  ?  Taken 
to  include,  as  seems  to  be  expected,  all  current 
attempts  at  "emotional  rhythmic  utterance,"  it 
means  very  little ;  hardly  more  than  the  really 
considerable  public  inclination  for  the  banjo  and 
the  coon-song  would  mean  to  the  student  of  mu- 
sic. At  its  best,  with  aU  possible  concession  to  its 
virtue  of  spontaneity  and  its  suggestion  of  a  nat- 
ural prestige  for  poetry,  it  represents  only  the 
rude  attempt  at  expressing  that  universal  expe- 
rience which  the  individualizing  hand  of  genius 
is  able  to  express  adequately.  An  instinct  for 
utterance  does  not  in  itself  constitute  or  even 
imply  art,  though  it  may  produce  art.    There  have 


128  POETRY   AND   COMMONPLACE 

been  nations  singularly  prone  to  rhythmic  utter- 
ance, yet  barren  of  noble  poetry. 

Very  narrow  in  range  and  monotonous  in  sub- 
stance is  the  verse  in  which  many  of  us  common 
citizens  find  our  account.  It  is  flatly  emotional 
and  baldly  respectable.  It  preaches,  it  pities,  it 
regrets ;  it  is  full  of  the  memories  of  childhood, 
of  innocence,  of  the  old  homestead  and  the  song 
that  mother  used  to  sing.  At  its  nadir  of  quality 
and  perhaps  its  zenith  of  influence,  one  finds  it 
cried  over  at  the  vaudeville  theatre.  It  is  surpris- 
ing how  sympathetically  even  a  "  submerged " 
audience  will  listen  to  that  babbling  of  green 
fields  which  it  has  never  seen.  In  America  this 
kind  of  verse  seems  to  have  achieved  a  sort  of 
apotheosis.  Not  to  risk  the  indiscretion  of  naming 
Longfellow  in  the  connection,  one  may  mention 
aloud  the  work  of  Mr.  James  Whitcomb  Riley, 
a  poet  of  real  powers,  who  has  been  content  to 
make  very  common  people  laugh  and  cry  by  quite 
obvious  means.  Doubtless  it  is  something  to  be 
a  virtuoso,  even  upon  the  harmonium,  but  the 
instrument  has  fatal  limitations. 

But  such  verse,  as  Mr.  Yeats  has  admirably 


POETRY  AND  COMMONPLACE  129 

pointed  out,  is  not  a  continuance  of  the  tradi- 
tions of  popidai-  poetiy  in  the  dignified  sense.  It 
is  simply  middle-class  poetry,  wliile  true  folk- 
poetry  is  the  expression  of  a  true  though  uncon- 
scious art.  What  are  we  to  make  of  such  news- 
paper verse  as  this : 

"  Wiser  the  honest  words  of  a  child 
Thau  the  scornful  scholar's  fleers  ; 
Richer  a  fortnight  of  crudest  faith 
Than  a  score  of  cynic  years ;  " 

or, 

"  Let  not  the  sham  life  of  the  tinsel  city, 

Whose  false  gods  all  the  blazing  fires  of  folly  fan, 
Blast  the  green  tendrils  of  my  human  pity ; 

Oh,  let  me  still  revere  the  sacred  soul  of  man  "  ? 

This  sort  of  verse  is  probably  as  palatable,  and 
even  as  immediately  profitable,  to  the  common 
citizen  as  any  verse  could  be.  Nobody  can  pos- 
sibly wish  to  laugh  at  it.  Unless  to  the  sociolo- 
gical student  of  poetry,  however,  it  falls  short  of 
special  significance  ;  not  because  the  feeling  ex- 
pressed is  not  sincere  and  sensible  and  of  univer- 
sal appeal,  but  because  it  is  imperfectly  individ- 
ualized :  loosely  grasped  and  vaguely  uttered. 
One  perceives  that  this  is  the  real  status  of  the 


130  POETRY  AND   COMMONPLACE 

trite  and  the  commonplace,  and  fancies  that  when 
the  champion  of  popular  poetry  chooses  Horace 
as  an  eminent  example  of  the  commonplace  in 
poetry,  he  is  holding  the  weak  thread  to  the  light. 
For  there  can  be  nothing  less  commonplace  than 
the  perfect  expression  by  individual  genius  of  the 
facts  of  universal  experience :  nothing  less  com- 
monplace, that  is,  than  true  poetry. 


POETRY   AS   FINE   ART 


POETRY   AS   FINE   ART 

While  we  properly  choose  to  tliink  of  poetry  as 
something  more  than  a  marketable  commodity, 
and  do  not,  under  the  best  conditions,  expect  it 
to  reach  a  wide  circle  of  immediate  customers,  we 
can  hardly  look  upon  the  unmarketableness  of 
current  American  verse  without  wonder.  Is  the 
product  inferior  to  that  of  other  arts,  or  is  the 
pubhc  taste  degenerate,  or  what  ? 

It  is  odd  that  people  who  feel  virtuous  in  spend- 
ing ten  dollars  for  a  seat  at  the  opera,  or  a  hun- 
dred dollars  for  a  modern  painting  (let  us  put  it 
mildly),  do  not  dream  of  spending  a  dollar  for 
the  new  book  of  verse  —  for  any  new  book  of 
verse.  The  point  is  not  that  such  a  book  fails  to 
interest  them ;  it  simply  does  not  concern  them 
in  any  way.  Modem  attempts  at  poetry  do  not 
constitute  one  of  the  worthy  objects  toward  the 
encouragement  of  which  one  is  expected  to  con- 
tribute in  dollars  —  or  cents.    With  the  better 


134  POETRY   AS   FINE   ART 

class  of  publishers  it  is  a  matter  of  policy  to  get 
out  a  new  book  of  verse  now  and  then.  Poetry  is 
an  item  which  ought  not  to  be  altogether  absent 
from  the  list  of  forthcoming  books  ;  and  the  pub- 
lisher is  willing  to  pay  the  piper  rather  than  have 
it  supposed  that  nobody  is  piping.  Not  long  ago 
a  book  of  verse  was  put  forth  by  a  well-known 
house,  and  received  with  unusual  favor  by  the 
critics  and  the  public.  In  the  course  of  six 
months  or  so  a  new  edition  was  announced  with 
some  trumpeting.  One  had  visions  of  substantial 
returns  to  the  lucky  poet  as  well  as  the  glory  of  a 
wide  audience  for  his  work,  and  might  have  been 
surprised  to  learn  that  the  first  edition  consisted 
of  seven  himdred  copies.  That  was  a  rare  success. 
Under  these  conditions,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
there  is  now  an  increasing  tendency  on  the  part  of 
verse- writers  of  refinement  to  have  their  work  pri- 
vately printed.  A  hundred  copies  can  be  pretty 
cheaply  produced,  and  readily  taken  care  of  by  the 
old-fashioned  method  of  subscription.  That  was  a 
thrifty  method  :  if  one's  bantling  is  to  be  cast  into 
the  waters,  it  is  certainly  more  discreet  to  furnish 
a  life-belt.    But  the  principle  is  vicious,  after  all. 


POETRY  AS  FINE  ART  135 

If  poetry  is  a  fine  art,  there  is  no  apparent  reason 
why  the  poetic  product  should  not  "  exploit"  itself 
upon  even  terms  with  any  other  fine-art  product  ; 
and,  say  what  we  will  about  the  independence  of 
the  artist,  we  cannot  feel  that  he  gains  in  dignity 
by  assuming  the  methods  of  the  amateur.  When 
the  poet  has  once  fairly  admitted  that  his  product 
is  unmerchantable,  and  has  declined  to  put  it  to 
the  test,  he  has  cast  suspicion  upon  its  value.  No 
work  of  art  gains  by  fond  handling ;  it  must  take 
its  chances  in  the  open  field. 

Public  indifference  to  such  attempts  is,  appar- 
ently, not  inconsistent  with  a  general  under- 
standing that  they  are  pretty  creditable.  The 
technical  quality  of  modern  verse  is  admitted, 
even  by  modern  verse-writers,  to  be  extremely 
high.  Certainly  there  is  an  increasing  number  of 
persons  who  are  able  to  approximate  good  form 
in  the  employment  of  metre  and  rhyme.  We 
study  that  sort  of  thing  ;  we  know  the  difference 
between  an  iambus  and  an  anapest,  and  we  get 
credit  for  it.  Possibly  we  get  too  much  credit  for 
it.  To  remark  that  So-and-so  is  not  much  of  a 
poet,  but  "  writes  as  good  verse  as  any  in  the 


136  POETRY   AS   FINE   ART 

language,"  is  a  little  like  saying  that  a  builder  of 
manikins  makes  as  good  bodies  as  the  Creator, 
though  they  happen  not  to  possess  the  breath  of 
life.  Of  course  the  trouble  with  this  figure  is 
that  any  one  can  tell  a  manikin  from  a  body  at 
a  glance,  and  no  one  can  tell  a  piece  of  skillful 
verse  from  a  poem,  at  a  glance.  Perhaps  that  is 
why  even  the  j)ublic  that  does  use  poetry  in  some 
form  is  bored  with  this  facile  and  measured  pro- 
duct of  the  modern  verse-writer.  It  may  very 
likely  be  poetry,  but  why  bother  with  probabil- 
ities when  there  is  so  much  poetry  in  the  world 
of  which  we  can  be  perfectly  sure  ?  Everybody 
knows  that  the  generation  is  lucky  which  pro- 
duces one  or  two  notable  poets  :  why  be  looking 
for  nightingales  on  every  bush  ?  These  are  rea- 
sonable queries  from  persons  who  care  only  for 
nightingales,  and  are  impatient  of  the  imita- 
tors of  the  nightingale.  Fortimately  there  are  a 
good  many  birds  which  possess  a  delicate  trill  or 
an  honest  chirp  of  their  own.  One  may  con- 
ceivably find  just  as  many  degrees  of  merit  in 
poetry  as  in  music  or  painting,  and  take  just  as 
much  satisfaction  in  enjoying  them  all. 


POETRY  AS  FINE  ART  137 

The  chances  are  that  a  great  deal  of  this  cur- 
rent verse  must  fail  to  be  poetry  in  any  sense, 
because  it  is  the  outcome  of  no  sort  of  creative 
power.  It  may  be  merely  good  verse,  able  to  satisfy 
the  ear  with  metres  and  the  taste  with  images. 
Such  verse  may  commonly  be  written  fi-om  some 
motive  other  than  a  burning  desire  for  seK-ex- 
prcssion.  People  will  dabble  in  poetry  as  they 
dabble  in  other  arts.  Or,  not  being  quite  arti- 
ficial, it  may  more  or  less  dimly  suggest  the 
presence  of  a  creative  power  which  needs  to  ex- 
press itself  through  some  other  medium  than 
verse.  There  never  was  such  a  thing  as  a  "  mute, 
inglorious  Milton  ;  "  a  great  poet's  power  of  ex- 
pression in  verse  is  a  part  of  the  man  himself, 
perhaps  the  most  significant  part,  certainly  in- 
separable from  his  power  of  poetic  conception. 
No  such  prodigy  as  an  inarticulate  genius  has  yet 
been  proved  to  have  existed ;  though  only  the 
highest  genius,  perhaps,  is  perfectly  articulate,  as 
only  the  virtuosos  are  really  masters  of  technique. 
Except  in  work  of  the  highest  genius,  there  are 
all  degrees  of  ill  balance  between  conception  and 
execution  :  but  if  verse  is  not  in  some  sense  articu- 


138  POETRY   AS  FINE   ART 

late  as  well  as  inspired,  it  is  not  poetry,  and  no 
mere  intensity  of  feeling,  no  sleight-of-hand  in  the 
employment  of  metre  and  rhyme  can  make  it  so. 
Not  only  as  a  means  for  expressing  spontaneous 
emotion  (and  of  course  it  must  always  be  that), 
but  as  a  fine  art,  poetry  continues  to  appeal  to  a 
small  but  steadfast  element  in  our  society  which 
the  comic  papers  laugh  at  and  the  sober  authori- 
ties condescend  to. 

Let  me  say  here  that  I  take  no  more  interest 
in  the  pursuit  of  poetry  for  art's  sake  than  for 
the  sake  of  sociology.  The  ambling  sentiment  of 
the  popular  poet  and  the  precious  phrasing  of  the 
high-voiced  literary  poet  are  equally  beside  the 
mark.  Neither  sincerity  nor  prettiness  can  by 
themselves  compass  poetic  beauty ;  the  partial,  the 
trite,  the  finicking,  are  as  fatal  in  poetry  as  in 
sculpture  or  painting.  One  may  fancy  an  advan- 
tage to  minor  work  in  those  arts  from  the  com- 
parative inaccessibility  of  the  great  masterpieces. 
That  would  not  hold  true  of  music ;  but  there,  as 
in  painting,  beauty  makes  its  appeal  through  one 
of  the  outer  senses,  while  poetry,  however  perfect 
its  form,  bestows  its  full  loveliness  only  upon  the 


POETRY  AS  FINE  ART  139 

inward  ear,  as  sculpture  communicates  its  full 
perfection  only  to  the  inward  eye.  The  painter 
and  the  composer  of  no  more  than  ordinary  powers 
are  often  able  by  simple  manipulations  to  impress 
effects  confusingly  suggestive  of  greatness,  upon 
an  audience  whose  mood  is  commonly  of  sensu- 
ous susceptibility  rather  than  pure  and  intelli- 
gent sympathy.  The  luxury  of  this  mood  partly 
accoimts  for  the  immense  and  increasing  encour- 
agement given  by  England  and  America  to  a  de- 
partment of  fine  art  in  which  they  have  actually 
achieved  far  less  of  moment  than  in  poetry.  Eng- 
lish poetry  as  a  whole  is  as  far  superior  to  Ger- 
man poetry  as  English  music  is  inferior  to  German 
music. 

The  analogy  between  poetry  and  the  sister  arts 
must  not  be  pushed  too  far.  The  real  barrier 
which  intervenes  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  we 
can  hardly  imagine  the  profitableness  of  establish- 
ing national  or  private  schools  of  the  poetic  art. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  a  little  indolent  of  us  to  lie 
back  upon  the  theory  that  poets  are  born,  not 
made.  The  poet  must  be  born  with  the  aptitude, 
yes ;  but  then  the  aptitude  must  be  developed. 


140  POETRY   AS   FINE   ART 

He  does  not  need  the  viva  voce  method ;  of  neces- 
sity, the  library  will  be  his  classroom  and  the 
highway  his  studio.  Poets  are  not  born  equal,  and 
their  work,  if  it  is  to  endure,  must  be  the  out- 
come of  hard  discipline  and  a  settled  philosophy  of 
life,  as  well  as  of  the  mysterious  glow  and  vigor 
of  fancy  which  we  call  inspiration.  Young  per- 
sons still  dream  dreams  of  startling  the  world 
by  some  outburst  of  metrical  frenzy  which  shall 
write  their  names  upon  the  skies.  Few  persons 
of  any  age  are  ready  to  devote  themselves,  for 
better  or  worse,  to  "the  homely  slighted  shepherd's 
trade."  Few  of  us  are  worthy  to  be  so  slighted ; 
we  do  not  deserve  the  tribute  of  contempt  which 
the  vulgar  world  is  ready  to  pay  to  those  who 
brazenly  pursue  the  best. 

But  there  is  little  use  in  plaintive  talk  about 
the  world,  vulgar  or  otherwise.  People  who  coidd 
conceivably  take  a  live  interest  in  poetry  as  a  fine 
art  must  be  few.  But  there  are  a  good  many 
millions  of  us  in  America  ;  and  there  are,  after  all 
reservations  have  been  made,  an  uncertain  num- 
ber of  thousands  who  really  possess  and  take 
pleasure  in  cultivating  a  sense,  rudimentary  at 


POETRY   AS   FINE   ART  141 

least,  for  artistic  value.  They  like,  or  wish  to 
like,  good  paintings,  good  music,  good  sculpture 
and  architecture  ;  and  they  feel  a  sort  of  responsi- 
bility for  the  support  of  those  arts.  Surely  it  is 
not  unreasonable  to  inquire  if  a  similar  sense  of 
interest  and  responsibility  in  our  immediate  poetic 
product  may  not  be  in  the  future  both  proper 
and  cultivable.  In  the  meantime  we  shall  look  to 
our  Recessionals  rather  than  our  Absent-Minded 
Beggars  to  keep  the  art  of  poetry  alive.  Genius 
will  continue  to  work  through  art.  It  will,  finally, 
continue  to  be  the  few  supreme  masters  of  song 
who  can  with  equal  success  touch  the  stops  of 
various  quills ;  who  are  able  always,  in  whatever 
mood  or  upon  whatever  plane,  to  conceive  justly 
and  to  express  rightly ;  to  create,  that  is,  the  noble 
and  rare  flower  of  genius  which  the  world  will 
for  some  time  continue  to  style  Poetry. 


POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE 


POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE 

Readers  whose  interest  persists  in  the  parlous 
question  of  the  modern  stage  are  likely  to  have 
read,  not  long  ago,  Mr.  Gosse's  essay  in  the 
"  Atlantic  Monthly  "  on  poetic  drama,  and  Mr. 
Corbin's  article  in  "  The  Forum "  dealing  with 
the  present  dramatic  situation  in  America.  Both 
writers  admit  patiently,  if  not  cheerfully,  that 
most  people  may  be  expected  to  go  to  the  theatre 
for  trivial  purposes,  and  that  the  stage  offers 
little  encouragement  to  those  who  wish  to  take 
the  modern  play  seriously.  "  The  drama,"  says 
Mr.  Corbin,  "  is  in  precisely  the  condition  in 
which  literature  would  be  if  the  reading  pub- 
lic were  limited  to  the  ten-cent  magazines." 
Mr.  Gosse  concedes  that  there  will  always  be 
eighty  per  cent,  of  theatre-goers  "  who  take  their 
theatre  as  if  it  were  morphia,  or  at  least  as  if  it 
were  a  glass  of  champagne.  But,"  he  proceeds, 
"we  suggest  that  the   residue,  the  twenty  per 


14G      POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE 

cent,  are  now  strong  enough  to  be  catered  for 
also."  This  seems  a  reasonable  demand :  not  that 
the  stage  be  instantly  "  reformed"  or  bodily  "  ele- 
vated," simply  that  it  do  the  right  thing  by  all  of 
its  patrons.  What,  from  the  point  of  view  of  that 
imaginable  twenty  per  cent.,  the  right  thing  would 
be,  is  a  subject  well  worth  considering. 

I 

By  way  of  reply  to  the  charge  of  current  indif- 
ference to  dramatic  poetry,  it  is  easy  to  allege 
the  continued  popularity  of  Shakespeare  on  the 
boards.  Granted  our  fidelity  to  the  Shakespeare 
tradition,  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether  the  interest 
of  a  modern  audience  in  the  Shakespeare  play  as 
now  presented  on  the  stage  is  often  quite  sincere. 
Moreover,  even  when  we  are  not  seduced  into 
beholding  the  Ophelia  of  the  lady  who  has  just 
come  up  from  vaudeville,  or  the  Shylock  of  the 
gentleman  who  has  just  come  down  from  melo- 
drama, —  even  when  we  fare  piously  to  the  best 
attainable  modern  presentation  of  Shakespeare, 
—  we  have  done  nothing  toward  keeping  English 
poetic  drama  alive.    In  truth,  we  know  that  as  a 


POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE      117 

practical  influence  the  Shakespeare  tradition  itself 
has  dominated  English  dramatic  poetiy  quite  too 
long.  Since  that  gi-eat  day  of  Elizabeth,  the  po- 
sition and  the  methods  of  the  stage  have  inevi- 
tably changed,  a  new  language  has  arisen,  and 
a  new  racial  temperament.  Yet  there  are  very 
few  plays  in  English  verse  now  written,  upon 
which  we  may  dare  look  without  fear  of  being 
once  more  confronted  with  the  pale  features  of 
the  exhumed  Elizabethan  Muse. 

Among  the  surprising  number  of  recent  at- 
tempts in  this  kind,  hardly  one  has  succeeded  in 
putting  off  the  trappings  of  Shakespearian  dic- 
tion. Now  and  then  the  imitation  has  been  de- 
liberate, or  at  least  confessed.  Such  studies 
would  seem  to  carry  with  them  the  discouraging 
implication  that  there  is  no  use  in  trying  to  unite 
modern  poetry  and  modern  stage-craft.  Of  course 
the  implication  is  an  old  one  ;  it  was  made,  in  a 
way,  by  all  those  nineteenth-century  cultivators 
of  the  "  closet-drama."  Why,  they  seem  to  have 
asked,  should  this  abrogation  of  the  footlights  and 
the  preoccupied  audience  matter  much  ?  One  gets 
more  pleasure  from  reading  a  Shakespeare  play 


148      POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE 

tlian  from  seeing  it  performed  ;  why  should  one 
care  to  have  his  own  poetic  play  actually  pro- 
duced ?  It  would  really  be  unsafe  to  appeal  to 
Shakespeare  in  this  connection,  for  his  own  plays 
probably  meant  little  to  him  except  as  they  were 
worth  acting  before  an  audience  whose  capacity 
he  knew;  and  we,  at  this  remove,  and  in  our 
chosen  part  as  readers,  cannot  help  sharing  in 
that  old  direct  contact  between  the  poet,  the 
players,  and  the  pit.  What  a  leap  from  this  vig- 
orous kind  of  play  to  our  reluctant  and  seden- 
tary drama  of  the  closet !  —  a  drama  which  substi- 
tutes declamation  for  rapid  dialogue,  and  retains 
merely  some  of  the  outward  symbols  and  imped- 
imenta of  action.  It  has  its  exits  and  its  en- 
trances, its  acts  and  scenes  upon  which  the  cur- 
tain is  never  to  rise  or  faU  except  in  fancy. 
Such  a  play  may  be  the  product  of  undoubted 
talent,  even  genius,  but  it  could  not  conceivably 
grip  and  hold  an  audience ;  and,  of  the  two,  it  is 
better  for  a  play  to  hail  from  the  greenroom  than 
from  the  library.  Much  admirable  poetry  may 
imbed  itself  in  such  a  drama ;  but  it  is,  at  best,  an 
interesting  hybrid,  rather  than  a  pure  form  of  lite- 


POETRY   AND   THE   STAGE  149 

rary  or  dramatic  art.  This  was  the  fatal  defect  in 
Tennyson's  dramatic  essays,  and,  though  in  his  case 
the  diction  was  personally  sincere,  of  Browning's. 
Apart  from  personal  sincerity  of  diction,  how- 
ever, there  is  a  racial  and  temporal  sincerity 
which  in  any  age  belongs  to  poetry  of  extensive 
as  well  as  of  intensive  power.  We  shrink  from 
connecting  the  notion  of  popularity  with  the  idea 
of  poetry,  as  it  is  probably  right  for  us  to  shrink 
with  regard  to  the  higher  lyrical  or  epical  forms. 
But  the  stage  is  essentially  a  popular  institution, 
and  poetry,  to  achieve  any  vital  connection  with 
it,  must  in  the  matters  of  structure  and  diction 
go  quite  halfway  to  meet  it.  No  play,  therefore, 
which  contravenes  the  principles  of  modern  stage- 
craft, or  of  the  simple  diction  which  has  become 
normal  in  modern  poetry,  can  hope  for  anything 
better  than  a  succes  d'estime  ;  that  is,  a  success 
based  upon  its  having  done  well  something  apart 
from  what  it  primarily  should  have  done.  There 
have  been  only  a  few  glorious  instances  in  which 
the  literary  value  of  a  dramatic  composition  has 
seemed  to  be  independent  of  its  usefulness  to  the 
contemporary  stage.    Most  closet-dramas  are  seen 


150  POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE 

in  perspective  to  have  been  neither  here  nor 
there ;  neither  very  good  as  poems,  nor  very  good 
as  plays.  Human  nature  is,  we  are  told,  always 
the  same ;  but  each  age  and  race  has  its  own 
social  nature,  its  own  mental  habit,  its  own  emo- 
tional propriety  even,  —  qualities  which  the  dra- 
matist can  least  afford  to  ignore.  A  living  drama, 
in  short,  must  not  only  "  hold  the  mirror  up  to 
nature,"  but  "  show  the  very  age  and  body  of  the 
time  his  form  and  pressure." 

II 

This  is  what,  in  its  own  way,  our  prose  drama  is 
doubtless  attempting  to  do.  It  is  natural  that 
the  modern  play  should  have  come  to  be,  in  form, 
pretty  much  everything  that  the  Shakespeare 
play  was  not.  Apart  from  the  substitution  of 
prose  for  verse,  the  tendency  has  been  everywhere 
for  simplification  of  substance  and  amplification 
of  accessory.  Our  elaborate  method  of  presenta- 
tion exacts  a  less  elaborate  scheme  of  composi- 
tion. The  stage-manager,  the  costumer,  and  the 
scene-shifter  have  to  be  considered  as  ministers 
to  the  pleasure,  and  champions  of  the  convenience. 


POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE      151 

of  the  public ;  the  five  acts  dwindle  to  three  or 
four,  and  the  number  of  scenes  is  cut  down  by 
more  than  half.  Yet  writers  of  so-called  poetic 
drama  have  ignored  this  change  of  usage  till  the 
other  day,  when  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips,  in  his 
very  first  play,  took  pains  to  require  no  impossi- 
ble feats  of  modern  stage-craft.  Attention  to 
such  matters  is  essential  to  a  renewal  of  relation 
between  poetry  and  the  stage.  If  we  have  really 
no  standards  of  poetic  diction  and  of  stage-craft 
which  fit  our  time  as  the  diction  and  stage-craft 
of  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries  fitted  the 
Elizabethan  time,  there  is  little  hope  of  any  such 
relation. 

The  question  of  theme  is  a  pretty  clear  one. 
The  poetic  drama,  if  it  continues  to  exist,  will  con- 
tinue to  concern  itself  with  the  ideal.  We  have, 
during  the  past  haK  century,  had  much  patter  in 
prose,  and  not  a  little  in  verse,  about  the  glori- 
ous opportunities  for  literature  in  the  celebration 
of  democracy,  of  commerce,  of  education,  and  what 
not ;  but  nobody  is  really  deceived  by  it.  The 
enslaving  of  electricity,  the  triumphs  of  barter, 
the  iron  tutelage  of  "  imperialism,"  have  some- 


152  POETRY  AND   THE   STAGE 

how  failed  to  expand  the  poet's  chest  or  clear  his 
voice.  These  things  are  business.  The  dramatic 
poet  may  therefore  be  expected  still  to  treat  the 
immemorial  themes  and,  ordinarily,  to  reap  ad- 
vantage from  a  remote  setting  for  his  action. 

Not  infrequently  of  late  the  attempt  has  been 
made  to  interpret  the  present  moment  in  dramatic 
blank  verse.  Every  age  has  doubtless  its  noble 
and  familiar  forms  of  speech ;  each  should  be 
reserved  for  its  proper  uses.  Blank  verse  is  the 
poetic  form  least  amenable  to  reason ;  it  has  a 
way  of  appearing,  after  all  possible  pains  have 
been  taken,  to  have  constructed  itself  according 
to  the  essential  genius,  rather  than  to  the  talented 
intention,  of  the  author.  So,  too  often,  the  royal 
chariot  turns  out  to  be  nothing  but  a  one-horse 
shay.  It  it  still  to  be  shown  that  even  a  career 
so  imposing  and  so  comparatively  remote  as  that 
of  Napoleon  can  afford  a  theme  for  tragedy  ; 
it  is  still  to  be  proved  that  American  politics 
is  capable  of  producing  materials  for  anything 
graver  than  opera  bouffe.  A  study  of  such  exper- 
iments in  poetic  drama  serves  simply  to  reaffirm 
an  ancient  article  of  faith.    No  great  di-amatic 


POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE      lo3 

poetry,  no  great  epical  poetry,  has  ever  dealt 
with  contemporary  conditions.  Only  the  austere 
processes  of  time  can  precipitate  the  multitude 
of  immediate  facts  into  the  priceless  residuum 
of  universal  truth.  The  great  dramatists  have 
turned  to  the  past  for  their  materials,  not  of 
choice,  but  of  necessity.  Here  and  there  in  the 
dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time,  some  human 
figure,  some  human  episode,  is  seen  to  have  wea- 
thered the  years,  and  to  have  taken  on  certain 
mysterious  attributes  of  truth;  and  upon  this 
foundation  the  massive  structure  of  heroic  poetry 
is  builded. 

In  the  meantime  what  are  we  to  look  for  as 
to  the  external  character  of  the  coming  poetic 
drama  ?  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  both  style 
and  structure  will  be  simple.  To  the  modern 
theater  audience,  even  to  the  imaginable  twenty 
per  cent,  of  it  which  is  seeking  a  high  and  perma- 
nent satisfaction,  the  ideal  will  have  to  be  pre- 
sented in  some  concrete  and  decisive  form.  There 
will  be  no  diffusion  of  interest,  —  we  have  more 
than  enough  of  that  in  practical  life,  —  and  there 
will  be  no  uncertainty  of  effect.  The  fact  has  been 


154      POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE 

illustrated  very  recently  by  the  surprisingly  en- 
thusiastic hearing  given  to  the  revival  of  "  Every- 
man." A  public  taste  which  is  approachable  by 
that  simple,  stern  old  morality  need  not  be  de- 
spaired of;  it  is  really  alive  and  ready  to 
employ  itself.  It  has  been  put  off  too  long  with 
imitations  of  Shakespeare,  and  with  translations 
of  foreign  plays.  Such  pretty  and  melancholy 
hallucinations  as  "  Pelleas  and  Melisande,"  such 
romantic  extravagances  as  "  Cyrano  de  Berge- 
rac,"  even  such  graceful  parables  as  "  The  Sunken 
Bell,"  it  will  listen  to  with  some  forcing  of  the 
sympathy.  In  the  end,  it  will  demand  some- 
thing more  easily  appreciable  by  a  solid,  law-cher- 
ishing race,  something  simple,  direct,  and  human. 
Poetic  drama  is  not  likely  soon,  or  ever,  to 
recover  its  old  supremacy  on  the  English  stage. 
But  a  beginning  has  now  been  made  toward  its 
reestabhshment  in  a  position  of  influence  ;  and  it 
is  fair  to  suppose  that  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Phil- 
lips, or  of  somebody  else,  the  movement  will  go 
on.  And  if  it  does  not  displace  prose,  —  which 
Heaven  defend !  —  work  of  this  sort  may,  with  its 
noble  simplicity  of  theme,  its  noble  purity  of  line, 


POETRY  AND  THE  STAGE      155 

afford  a  priceless  standard  of  current  dramatic 
values,  which  will  sensibly  affect  the  quality  of 
our  prose  drama.  There  are  other  good  things  in 
the  world  beside  poetry,  but  few  things  which  are 
not  the  better  for  being  in  the  same  world  with 
it.  Certainly  if  we  could  imagine  a  day  when 
poetry  should  have  been  hopelessly  exiled  from 
the  boards,  we  could  imagine  the  drama  to  be 
doomed  as  a  means  of  art,  —  that  is,  as  a  real  in- 
fluence in  modern  life. 


LITERATURE  AS   A  BY-PRODUCT 


LITERATURE   AS  A   BY-PRODUCT 

"  As  a  rule,"  says  Mr.  Stedman,  "  distrust  the 
quality  of  that  product  which  is  not  the  result  of 
legitimate  professional  labor.  Art  must  be  fol- 
lowed as  a  means  of  subsistence  to  render  its  cre- 
ations worthy,  to  give  them  a  human  element." 
The  dictum  comes  very  gracefully  from  one  who 
has  never  himself  had  to  pluck  the  waterfowl  be- 
fore he  apostrophized  it ;  yet  Mr.  Stedman  would 
hardly  be  called  an  amateur  in  letters.  No  doubt 
the  literary  hack  gets  along  more  expeditiously 
on  account  of  the  burr  imder  his  saddle.  The 
profession  of  letters,  like  pugilism,  has  its  corol- 
laries ;  theatrical  starring,  for  instance,  or  even 
bag-punching,  —  a  creditable  form  of  exercise 
which  some  people  pay  to  see.  But  one  does  not 
like  to  feel  that  professionalism  in  Hterature,  if 
it  is  a  title  to  honor,  should  turn  upon  the  point 
of  support.  Pretty  much  the  same  mediocrity  is 
the  rule  in  Grub  Street  as  elsewhere,  and  a  good 


160  LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-PRODUCT 
deal  of  the  best  work  gets  itself  done  far  from 
that  ancient  via  dolorosa.  Arnold  was  not  an 
amateur  because  he  inspected  schools,  or  LoweU 
because  he  taught,  or  Lamb  because  he  clerked 
it.  Nor  has  Austin  Dobson's  work  changed  in 
character  or  quality  since  he  ceased  to  spend  cer- 
tain hours  of  the  day  in  the  Foreign  Office. 

But  these  men,  one  may  say,  were  really  lit- 
erary men,  whatever  method  of  boiling  the  pot 
they  may  have  found  convenient;  the  genuine 
man  of  affairs,  eminent  in  his  own  field,  very 
seldom  produces  pure  literature.  Granted:  but 
the  thing  does  sometimes  happen ;  and  when  it 
does,  the  world  is  not  likely  to  wish  that  some- 
thing else  had  happened  instead,  least  of  all  that 
the  man  had  never  concerned  himself  with  affairs. 
On  the  contrary,  it  recognizes  that  the  work  owes 
its  merit  to  the  man  as  he  is.  Some  men  have  to 
be  doing  a  great  many  things  in  order  to  do  any- 
thing well.  If  their  every-day  brains  were  not 
busied  with  finance  or  politics  or  scholarship, 
their  holiday  brains  would  remain  unnourished 
and  sterile.  They  do  not  care  for  solitude  or 
meditation.   They  are  not  interested  in  landscape. 


LITERATURE   AS   A  BY-PRODUCT       161 

natural  or  human.  They  must  have  a  tangible 
end  in  view,  whether  it  is  the  pro\^ng  of  a  thesis 
or  the  making  of  a  million.  That  end  attained 
or  in  sight  leaves  the  spirit  free  for  fresh  woods 
and  pastures  new. 

Such  a  man  was  Walter  Bagehot.  Banker, 
political  theorist,  and  economist,  he  was  also  a  man 
of  letters.  Some  obvious  traits  of  the  amateur  he 
had.  He  was  too  busy  either  to  be  anxious  to  say 
things,  or  to  be  fussy  about  his  manner  of  speech. 
His  somewhat  testy  American  editor  fumes  in 
many  a  footnote  over  the  essayist's  slipshod  syn- 
tax and  inaccuracies  of  quotation  and  allusion. 
Probably  most  of  his  readers  feel  that  these  de- 
tails do  not  matter  much ;  a  worse  thing  would 
have  befallen  if,  by  taking  thought  of  his  predi- 
cates and  his  authorities,  he  had  deprived  us  of 
the  open,  vigorous  style,  the  hearty,  talking  voice, 
refined  yet  unstudied,  for  which  we  value  him. 

Bagehot  had  a  good-humored  contempt  for  the 
professional  writer :  "  The  reason  why  so  few 
good  books  are  written,"  he  said,  "  is  that  so  few 
people  that  can  write  know  anything.  In  general, 
an  author  has  always  lived  in  a  room,  has  read 


162        LITERATURE   AS   A   BY-PRODUCT 

books,  has  cultivated  science,  is  acquainted  with 
the  style  and  sentiments  of  the  best  authors.  But 
he  is  out  of  the  way  of  employing  his  own  eyes 
and  ears.  He  has  nothing  to  hear  and  nothing  to 
see.  His  life  is  a  vacuum."  Bagehot  could  not 
foresee  that  in  the  course  of  a  half-century  the 
author  would  have  deserted  his  comfortable  quar- 
ters, and  would  be  sleeping  in  byways  and  eating 
by  hedges  for  fear  some  stray  vagabond  of  copy 
should  not  be  brought  in  to  the  literary  feast. 
When  this  was  written,  the  common  ideal  of  the 
author's  life  was  very  different;  there  was  the 
admired  Southey  tradition,  for  example.  "  Southey 
had  no  events,  no  experiences,"  wrote  Bagehot. 
"  His  wife  kept  house  and  allowed  him  pocket- 
money,  just  as  if  he  had  been  a  German  professor 
devoted  to  accents,  tobacco,  and  the  dates  of 
Horace's  amours."  In  truth,  one  hardly  knows 
what  to  say  for  the  benefits  of  seclusion  and  lei- 
sure when  an  active  man  can  write  like  this. 
Bagehot' s  own  love  of  action  made  him  somewhat 
uncharitably  impatient  of  anything  hke  physical 
or  mental  sedentariness.  It  was  a  grown  man's 
business  to  be  doing  as  well  as  thinking,  to  "  get 


LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-PRODUCT       1G3 

into  the  game,"  whatever  it  might  be,  and  to  let 
earned  insight  and  unhidden  zeal  wield  the  pen, 
if  it  must  be  wielded.  Bagehot's  contribution  to 
literature  was  not  confined  to  his  critical  essays. 
He  wrote  on  the  English  Constitution,  on  bank- 
ing, on  political  economy,  as  directly,  vigorously, 
and  humorously  as  on  Shakespeare  or  Gibbon. 
Books  produced  in  such  a  vein  are  not  "  mere  lit- 
erature ;  "  they  are  the  product  of  study  or  observa- 
tion and  written  for  a  practical  end.  They  belong  to 
the  class  of  book  which  commonly  makes  its  little 
contribution  to  contemporary  knowledge  or  spec- 
ulation, and  is  forgotten.  The  force  of  such  work 
may  be  transmitted,  and  continue  to  exist,  but 
such  a  book  can  live,  as  a  book,  only  when  it  has 
been  written  by  a  man  who  is,  among  other 
things,  a  creator.  One  thinks  of  not  a  few  in- 
stances in  wliich  a  vigorous  and  polished  style 
has  resulted  from  the  application  of  a  cultivated 
mind  to  serious  and  absorbing  practical  themes. 

Happily,  the  creative  spirit  springs  forth  now 
and  then  from  the  slough  of  dilettantism  as  well 
as  from  the  paved  highways  of  trade  or  the 
trodden  paths  of  the  (quadrangle.    FitzGerald  on 


164        LITERATURE   AS   A  BY-PRODUCT 

FitzGerald  is  not  to  be  taken  too  seriously.  It 
was  his  wliim  to  represent  himself  as  idle  and 
vacillating,  but  few  men  have  been  more  consist- 
ent or  more  genuinely  employed.  Taking  him, 
however,  as  the  type  of  inaction,  he  would  still 
have,  in  common  with  the  other  subjects  of  this 
paper,  his  technical  amateurship  in  letters.  He 
never  made,  or  desired  to  make,  any  money  by 
writing. 

But  there  are  still  other  classes  of  unprofes- 
sional writers  to  whom  we  are  now  owing  the 
production  of  good  literature.  Toil  and  crime, 
for  example,  have  found  effective  voices  of  their 
own.  What  the  eighteenth  century  thought  simply 
vulgar,  and  the  nineteenth  gathered  data  from, 
has  now  become  literary  material ;  even  the  annals 
of  the  poor  are  to  be  short  and  simple  no  longer. 
All  scientific  investigation,  indeed,  as  the  in- 
stances of  Spencer  and  Huxley  go  to  prove, 
threatens  to  record  itself,  sooner  or  later,  in 
terms  of  some  personality,  and  to  become  litera- 
ture. Natural  historians  have  not  a  few  famous 
books  to  their  credit ;  there  seems  to  be  some 
property  in  this  gentle  trade  which  gives  especial 


LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-PRODUCT  1G5 
kindliness  to  the  pen.  The  printed  word  of  a 
Thoreau,  a  Jefferies,  a  John  Muir,  has  a  richness 
and  mellowness  which  seem  to  come  direct  from 
soil  and  sun.  Even  when  a  naturalist's  facts  are 
discredited  by  later  authority,  his  writing  is  likely 
to  be  cherished  as  hterature.  Gilbert  White  is 
still  much  more  than  a  name  to  naturalists,  his 
swallow  speculations  to  the  contrary.  Neverthe- 
less, a  recent  editor  puts  the  case  for  him  in  a 
way  which  can  hardly  be  disputed  :  "  'T  is  as  a  lit- 
erary monument,  therefore,  I  hold,  that  we  ought 
above  all  things  to  regard  these  rambling  and 
amiable  Letters.  They  enshrine  for  us  in  mmia- 
ture  the  daily  life  of  an  amateur  naturalist  in  the 
days  when  the  positions  of  parson,  sportsman, 
country  gentleman,  and  man  of  science  were  not 
yet  incongruous." 

It  is  surprising  how  many  books  which  the 
world  preserves  are  built  upon  local  observation 
and,  anecdote.  Mr.  Henry  James,  we  recall,  once 
said  of  Thoreau, "  He  was  more  than  provincial ;  he 
was  parochial."  The  remark  has  so  much  the  air  of 
finality,  it  is  so  obviously  a  statement  of  fact,  that 
one's  first  instinct  is  to  bolt  it  without  ado.    Pre- 


166        LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-PRODUCT 

sently,  it  may  be,  that  mild  inward  monitor  which 
does  so  much  to  conserve  the  eupeptic  mind  sug- 
gests that  fact  is  not  truth,  and  that  the  morsel  will 
bear  reconsideration.  What  is  it  to  be  provincial  ? 
and  what  is  it  supposed  to  do  or  imdo  for  a  man  or 
his  work  ?  One  has  heard  it  said  that  London  itself 
is  provincial  Certainly  Mr.  James's  cosmopolitan- 
ism has  not  kept  him  from  dwelling  among  and 
upon  a  class  of  Londoners  whose  local  preoccupa- 
tion, if  this  were  the  point  at  issue,  is  quite  equal 
to  that  of  a  New  England  villager.  But  local  pre- 
occupation is  not  the  point ;  to  be  provincial  is 
to  be  in  a  sense  unpresentable,  to  hail  patently, 
as  we  may  fancy  Mr.  James  saying,  from  an  in- 
eligible somewhere. 

The  cosmopolitan  idea  has  apparently  given  us 
a  new  standard  of  eligibility.  People  used  to  take 
the  grand  tour  for  their  souls'  good ;  but  they 
"  dragged  at  each  remove  a  lengthening  chain." 
They  traveled  to  become  more  worthy  of  staying 
at  home.  They  did  not  dream  that  absenteeism 
would  come  to  be  held  actually  a  state  of  grace. 
They  would  hardly  have  seen  the  point  of  that 
witty  comment  ujwn  Mr.  James,  "  To  be  truly 


LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-rRODUCT  167 
cosmopolitan  a  man  must  be  at  home  even  in  his 
own  country."  It  is  something,  after  all,  to  be 
indigenous.  Thoreau  had  his  own  simple  philo- 
sophy as  to  home-staying.  "  There  is  no  more 
tempting  novelty,"  he  writes,  "  than  this  new  No- 
vember. No  going  to  Europe  or  to  another  world 
is  to  be  named  with  it.  Give  me  the  old  famihar 
walk,  post-office  and  all,  with  this  ever  new  self, 
with  this  infinite  expectation  and  faith  which  does 
not  know  when  it  is  beaten.  We'll  go  nutting 
once  more.  We  '11  pluck  the  nut  of  the  world  and 
crack  it  in  the  winter  evenings.  Theatres  and  all 
other  sight-seeing  are  puppet-shows  in  compari- 
son. I  will  take  another  walk  to  the  cliff,  another 
row  on  the  river,  another  skate  on  the  meadow, 
be  out  in  the  first  snow,  and  associate  with  the 
winter  birds." 

Probably  no  theory  is  more  useful  and  comfort- 
ing to  critics  than  the  theory  of  literature  as  an 
art.  It  breaks  a  road  through  much  difficult 
country,  and  keeps  the  line  open  between  the 
reconnoiterer  and  his  base.  But  even  in  the 
field  of  pure  letters  one  does  not  find  that  all 
the  masterpieces  have  been    produced  by  delib- 


168  LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-PRODUCT 
erate  literary  intention.  The  exceptions  are  in- 
deed numerous  enough  to  induce  momentary 
doubts  as  to  the  reliability  of  any  precise  theory 
of  composition.  One  sees  here  and  there  bits  of 
pure  literature  which  appear  to  have  been  born, 
not  made ;  they  are  impulsive,  altogether  lacking 
in  artifice  —  why  not  in  art  ?  They  offer  a  most 
convenient  handle  to  such  active  uncritical  minds 
as  Mr.  Kipling,  who  is  able  to  dispose  of  the 
whole  business  of  art  and  criticism  in  the  jaunty 
announcement, 

"  There  are  nine  and  sixty  ways  of  constructing  tribal  lays, 
And  every  single  one  of  them  is  right." 

Of  course  Mr.  Kipling's  famous  phrase  is 
brought  to  bear  directly  upon  poetry,  but  it  is 
equally  true,  or  imtrue,  of  a  good  deal  of  prose. 
Literature  is  really  produced  now  and  then  by  a 
kind  of  inadvertency  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  why. 
Men  who  have  a  taste  for  that  form  of  expression 
are  likely  to  get  a  training  in  it  which  they  know 
nothing  about.  We  use  paint  or  clay  because  we 
choose,  and  words  because  we  must.  We  may, 
therefore,  by  the  grace  of  Heaven,  stumble  upon 
forms  of  speech  or  of  colloquial  writing  so  indi- 


LITERATURE  AS  A  BY-PRODUCT       1G9 

vidual  and  sincere  as  to  be  better  than  anything 
we  could  bring  forth  by  a  more  conscious  im- 
pulse. A  process  like  this  cannot  yield  sustained 
flights  of  prose  or  verse,  but  it  does  yield  such 
masterpieces  of  their  kind  as  the  immortal  Diary 
of  the  unliterary  Pepys,  and  the  still  famous  letters 
of  that  author  of  once  famous  novels,  Frances 
Burney. 


INTIMATE  LITERATURE 


INTIMATE   LITERATURE 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  belief  just  now,  espe- 
cially among  those  who  do  not  read  essays,  that 
the  essay  is  pretty  much  a  thing  of  the  past. 
There  was,  of  course,  a  day  of  glory  for  it ;  there 
was  even  a  day  when  it  held  the  top  of  the  mar- 
ket, or  nearly  that.  But  this  was  a  good  vague 
while  ago.  Very  few  people,  we  are  assured,  try 
to  write  essays  nowadays,  and  when  they  do  the 
residts  are  not  worth  much.  Critical  essays  com- 
monly deal  with  books  and  authors  that  every- 
body knows  about,  or  else  with  books  and  authors 
that  nobody  wants  to  know  about.  What  do  we 
care  for  John  Doe's  opinion  of  Shakespeare,  or 
Richard  Roe's  remarks  on  Lodovico  Castelvetro  ? 
As  for  the  discursive  essay,  it  is  folly,  at  this  day 
of  the  world,  to  adopt  such  a  medium  for  creative 
writing.  What 's  the  matter  with  the  novel  ? 
There  is  your  true  modern  vehicle  for  eloquence, 
or  sentiment,  or  philosophy ;  and  "  something 
doing  "  besides. 


174  INTIMATE   LITERATURE 

In  a  commercial  sense,  the  essay  does,  just  now, 
lie  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea,  the  spe- 
cial article  and  the  novel.  Few  American  period- 
icals have  room  for  it."  In  the  publisher's  catalogue 
it  holds  a  place  of  comparative  obscurity  next 
door  to  the  equally  sequestered  item  of  verse.  It 
is  not  advertised  in  the  newspapers  or  displayed 
in  book-shop  windows :  a  back-handed  compli- 
ment, if  one  chooses,  to  the  incorruptible  quality 
of  the  audience  it  is  destined  to  reach.  To  the 
quality  and  constancy  of  that  audience,  in  fact, 
the  essay  owes  its  continued  and  healthy  exist- 
ence. Not  yet  has  it  been  absorbed  in  the  novel 
or  displaced  by  the  special  article,  though  its 
quiet  merits  have  been  somewhat  obscured  to  the 
casual  eye  by  the  neighborhood  of  more  showy 
objects.  Such  books  are  ordained  in  the  nature  of 
things  for  a  success  of  appreciation  by  compara- 
tively few  readers.  The  newspapers  and  "  criti- 
cal "  organs  wiU  have  something  brief  and  affable 
to  say  of  them ;  but  they  will  not  be  much  talked 
about  either  there  or  elsewhere.  Nevertheless, 
they  wiU  make  their  place  and  hold  it. 

If  it  is  true  that  a  novelist  cannot  hide  behind 


INTIMATE   LITERATURE  175 

his  narrative,  it  is  more  obviously  true  that  an 
essayist  is  at  the  mercy  of  his  discourse.  A  dozen 
sentences  are  enough,  perhaps,  to  lay  him  before 
us,  or  at  least  the  true  outline  of  him,  and  it  is  at 
our  own  risk  that  we  carry  on  our  observations. 
A  writer  of  treatises  may  remain  an  unknown 
quantity ;  for  his  business  is  only  to  pile  one  stone 
upon  another,  and  there  is  no  trace  of  human 
emotion  in  the  shaft  which  is  finally  reared.  But 
an  essay  is,  next  to  a  poem,  the  most  directly  hu- 
man of  all  literary  products. 

This  is  true,  at  least,  of  the  discursive  essay. 
We  have  never  had  a  Montaigne  or  a  Lamb  in 
America,  but  cheerfully  accepting  as  we  now  do 
for  the  most  part  the  fact  that  our  literature  is  a 
department,  or,  as  Mr.  Howells  calls  it,  a  condi- 
tion of  English  literature,  we  are  still  at  liberty 
to  be  proud  of  what  we  have  done  in  the  field  of 
the  discursive  essay.  For  scholarship  and  for 
technical  criticism  there  is  an  undoubted  advan- 
tage in  a  logically  articulate  structure,  and  even  a 
requirement  of  it.  But  there  is  a  sort  of  creative 
prose  which  owes  its  charm  to  spontaneity,  and 
at  its  best  comes  nearer  gaining  the  effects  of 


176  INTIMATE  LITERATURE 

poetry  than  any  other  prose  form,  —  even  than 
the  carefully  modulated  inventions  which  are 
called  rhythmic  prose.  In  a  sense,  that  is,  the 
discursive  essay  is  a  purer  form  of  literature  than 
the  logical  essay.  It  comes  more  direct  from  the 
personality  of  the  author,  less  compromised  by 
mere  thinking,  and  less  hampered  by  set  method  : 
and  this  is  why  a  considerable  personality  must 
stand  behind  it. 

Wherever  it  may  lie  in  tone  and  content  be- 
tween the  extremes,  say,  of  Thackeray's  "  Round- 
about Papers  "  and  Emerson's  "  Essays,"  it  is  a 
daring  form,  rarely  found  in  its  perfection,  and 
then  perfect  because  it  expresses  a  personality  of 
distinction.  One  need  only  think  a  moment  of  the 
idle  triviality  of  Rambler,  or  Chatterer,  or  On- 
looker columns  in  the  daily  press  to  be  assured  of 
this.  In  the  hands  of  the  ordinary  journalist  the 
medium  becomes  worthless  from  the  literary  point 
of  view,  its  fine  audacity  becomes  mere  presump- 
tion, and  its  easy  familiarity  mere  impertinence. 
What  makes  for  an  effective  personality  in  lit- 
erature? Not  learning,  nor  logical  faculty,  nor 
cleverness  of  hand  or  fancy.    These  are  qualities 


INTIMATE  LITERATURE  177 

which,  joined  with  perseverance,  can  do  almost 
anything-  outside  of  art,  and  nothing  at  all  in  it. 
The  close  relation  between  the  discursive  essay 
and  other  forms  of  intimate  literature  is  obvious. 
If  the  great  diarists  have  merely  written  letters 
to  themselves,  so  have  the  great  essayists.  Miss 
Barney's  diary  and  letters  hardly  differ  from 
each  other,  and  neither  form  is  materially  distin- 
guishable from  that  of  the  discursive  essay.  Ac- 
cording to  her  own  account.  Miss  Burney's  con- 
versation was  not  at  aU  brilliant.  She  records  her 
own  trivialities  and  other  people's  clevernesses 
with  equal  candor,  and  was  doubtless  consoled  by 
the  consciousness  that  the  colloquial  flow  and 
himior  of  her  letters  in  some  degi-ee  made  up  for 
the  primness  and  parsimony  of  her  speech.  The 
facts  are  precisely  reversed  in  Johnson's  case. 
Even  in  his  letters  he  retained  for  the  most  part 
that  ponderous  mask  of  style.  It  remained  for  Bos- 
well  and  Miss  Burney,  by  the  record  of  his  speech, 
to  let  us  know  what  a  good  feUow  the  great  man 
was.  Not  a  few  novelists  have  been  essentially 
essayists  ;  one  may  cull  Roundabout  Papers  at 
will  from  "  Vanity  Fair,"  and  admirable  familiar 


178  INTIMATE  LITERATURE 

essays  from  "  Tom  Jones,"  passim.  The  diarist 
and  the  letter-writer  are  in  the  nature  of  things 
less  subject  to  suspicion  of  "  playing  to  the  gal- 
lery "  than  the  essayist  or  the  novelist ;  but  the 
distinction  seems  largely  theoretical. 

Whether  the  familiar  essayist  has  been  born  to 
his  medium  or  has  simply  seized  upon  it,  can  be 
determined  pretty  easily  by  appeal  to  his  letters. 
Lamb  and  Holmes  stand  the  test  perfectly ;  they 
were  not  more  literary,  not  more  colloquial,  in 
writing  to  a  thousand  persons  than  in  writing  to 
one.  With  Montaigne  the  case  is  a  little  less  clear ; 
we  have  not  a  great  many  of  his  letters,  and  it 
must  be  confessed  that  most  of  what  we  have  are 
reasonably  dull.  He  lived  in  a  formal  age,  how- 
ever, and  was  simply  finding  his  own  when,  in  his 
essays,  he  escaped  from  the  trammels  of  polite 
letter-writing.  The  apologist  for  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  cannot  make  out  quite  so  good  a  case. 
His  letters  are  not  in  the  least  like  his  essays,  and, 
though  both  have  a  certain  quality  of  intimacy, 
neither  mode  seems  to  express  the  man's  person- 
ality quite  satisfactorily.  The  Vailima  letters,  with 
all  their  cleverness,  do  not  increase  one's  regard 


INTIMATE  LITERATURE  179 

for  the  writer.  They  lack  the  dignity  and  restraint 
which  belong  to  all  worthy  forms  of  self-expres- 
sion. One  does  not  need  to  be  always  throwing 
a  chest,  but  then,  one  cannot  afford  to  doff  his 
manners  with  liis  frock  coat.  Stevenson  thought 
it  rather  fun  to  be  —  in  point  of  literary  taste, 
let  us  say  —  a  little  underbred  with  his  familiars. 
Such  was  the  fate  of  one  to  whom  art  was  a 
heaven-blessed  "  stunt."  What  perfect  literary 
breeding  there  is  in  all  the  letters  of  Cowper  or 
Gray  or  FitzGerald ;  here  is  true  intimacy  with- 
out familiarity,  the  "  ease  with  dignity  "  which  is 
the  sign  of  classics  in  this  kind. 

From  the  familiar  essayist  one  has  more  to 
expect  and  less  to  fear  than  from  any  other 
worker  in  the  field  of  belles-lettres.  The  bird's- 
eye  viewer  of  book  annoimcements  may  well  find 
his  vision  and  perhaps  his  patience  taxed  by  the 
extent  and  intricacy  of  the  prospect.  Here  and 
there,  luckily,  the  eye  finds  a  straight  path  to 
some  green  clearing  or  shining  water  which  lies 
without  shadow  of  doubt  in  the  bookman's  para- 
dise. At  such  moments  the  essayist  has  his  in- 
nings. We  are  feeling  a  little  doubtful  about  Mr. 


180  INTIMATE  LITERATURE 

So-and-So's  forthcoming  novel,  or  about  Miss 
This-or-That's  new  book  of  verse.  How  do  we 
know  that  the  divine  fire  may  not  have  waned 
or  even  gone  out  altogether:  this  business  of  in- 
spiration is  such  a  tricky  one.  But  the  essayist 
with  his  lesser  torch,  —  we  shall  know  just  where 
to  find  him,  ready  to  lead  us  with  even  pace  along 
the  well-known  waysides  of  his  choice.  We  shall 
not  make  the  very  highest  peaks  of  Parnassus, 
but  the  journey  is  sure  to  bring  us  through  a 
pleasant  and  profitable  coimtry  ;  and  there  will 
be  no  serious  accidents  by  the  way. 


CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY 


CLEVERNESS   AND   ORIGINALITY 

One  can  harclly  give  attention  to  the  passing 
literary  show  without  being  struck  and  struck 
again  with  the  cleverness  of  the  performance. 
Never  has  an  age  set  a  higher  value  on  skill  in 
invention  and  manipulation.  Never  has  the  race 
more  sharply  enjoyed  its  sportsmanship.  Even 
the  stout  Anglo-Saxon,  though  he  takes  satisfac- 
tion in  the  existence  of  an  ethical  standard,  finds 
his  recreation  in  spectacles  of  adroitness.  The 
sleight-of-hand  and  aplomb  of  the  wheat  operator 
makes  the  American  breathe  hard ;  and  the  Briton 
smiles  outright  over  a  successful  ruse  in  diplo- 
macy. Naturally,  such  a  public  is  not  going  to 
put  up  with  any  kind  of  dullness  or  clumsiness 
m  art ;  naturally,  also,  it  is  ready  to  put  up  with 
almost  any  kind  of  cleverness.  It  has,  to  be  sure, 
little  concern  with  the  more  fastidious  exercises 
of  the  pen.  The  issue  of  style,  the  cry  of  art  for 
art's  sake,  has  never  been  generaUy  listened  to  in 


184        CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY 

England  or  America.  We  are  too  practical  and 
straightforward  for  that ;  we  have  an  inborn  con- 
viction that  style  is  a  verbal  manifestation  of  per- 
sonality, or,  as  Mr.  Howells  puts  it,  "  a  man's  way 
of  saying  things." 

We  used  to  hear  much  about  style  as  the 
"  clothing  of  thought."  I  think  it  was  among 
the  cliques,  the  coteries,  the  brotherhoods,  the 
"  movements,"  that  this  notion  of  style  as  a  sar- 
torial product  arose,  and  among  them  it  lingers. 
It  is  not  easy  to  imagine  a  Horace  or  a  Milton 
solemnly  assisting  at  the  toilet  of  a  naked  and 
wriggling  infant  thought.  In  fact,  with  the  great 
literary  artist  thought  and  language  appear  to 
be  nearly  inseparable ;  they  have  sprung  into 
being  together,  they  are  one  flesh.  Great  men 
work  through  style,  not  for  it,  and  many  of  them 
have  put  on  record  their  contempt  for  those  who 
pursue  it  for  its  own  sake.  "  People  think  I  can 
teach  them  style,"  said  Arnold.  "What  stuff  it  all 
is  !  Have  something  to  say,  and  say  it  as  clearly 
as  you  can.  That  is  the  only  secret  of  style." 
"  Can  they  really  think,"  writes  Newman,  "  that 
Homer,  or  Pindar,  or  Shakespeare,  or  Dryden,  or 


CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY  185 
Walter  Scott  were  accustomed  to  aim  at  style  for 
its  own  sake,  instead  of  being  inspired  with  their 
subject,  and  pouring  forth  beautiful  words  because 
they  had  beautif  id  thoughts  ?  This  is  surely  too 
great  a  paradox  to  be  borne.  .  .  .  The  artist  has 
his  great  or  rich  visions  before  him,  and  his  only 
aim  is  to  bring  out  what  he  thinks  or  what  he 
feels  in  a  way  adequate  to  the  thing  spoken  of, 
and  appropriate  to  the  speaker." 

An  affected  or  artificial  manner  of  writing  is, 
most  of  us  feel,  as  unprofitable  as  the  same  man- 
ner in  walking  or  speaking.  One  is  left  abso- 
lutely in  doubt  as  to  what  sort  of  person  the 
writer  really  is.  The  chances  are  he  is  not  dis- 
tinctly any  sort  of  person.  People  who  have  some- 
thing to  say,  something,  that  is,  which  must  be 
said  for  their  own  peace  of  mind,  and  who  are 
used  to  saying  things,  are  not  likely  to  fidget 
about  their  manner  of  speech.  All  possible  care 
short  of  fidgeting  they  do  take.  Few  men  are  con- 
scious from  the  outset  of  a  sure  and  distinguish- 
able "  way  "  of  speech ;  and  the  fearsome  thing 
is  not  that  a  man  should  take  thought,  but  that 
he  should  so  often  mistake  fastidious  predilection 


186        CLEVERNESS  AND   ORIGINALITY 

for  creative  impulse,  and  deliberately  worry  him- 
self into  an  unnatural  habit  of  utterance.  In  the 
effort  to  rise  above  commonplaceness,  he  sinks  to 
imitation  or  contortion ;  and  a  sad  hour  ensues 
for  the  long-suffering  boot-strap.  Unfortunately 
this  mistake,  common  to  those  who  can  only 
fidget,  and  important  only  to  them,  is  sometimes 
made  by  their  betters ;  as  in  the  instance  of 
Louis  Stevenson,  who  as  a  boy  began  to  imitate 
and  to  contort,  and  who  never  quite  outgrew 
the  notion  that  art  is  a  trick.  Luckily,  his  humor 
and  love  of  life  kept  him  at  all  times  from  the 
worst  excesses  of  the  stylist,  and  his  indomita- 
ble personality  insisted  upon  making  itself  felt 
through  the  many  disguises  with  which  his  per- 
verse and  Pucklike  ingenuity  attempted  to  veil  it. 
Style  may  sensibly  be  taken  to  mean  the  verbal 
expression  of  any  effective  personality  between 
the  extremes  of  the  scholar,  the  dreamer,  the 
dilettante  absorbed  in  his  fancies  and  his  periods, 
and  the  active,  alert,  humorous  intelligence  to 
which  no  human  experience  comes  amiss,  and 
which  chooses  to  be  downright  at  cost,  if  need 
be,   of   delicacy.    The   larger  world  prefers   its 


CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY        187 

Bagehot  to  its  Pater.  It  passes  by  with  good- 
humored  indijBPerence  such  a  book  of  essays  as 
not  long  since  came  out  of  Oxford.  The  writer 
is  not,  perhaps,  a  stylist  in  the  extreme  sense. 
He  does  not  look  for  a  theme  to  give  his 
cadences  a  chance,  but  words  have  a  charm  for 
him  apart  from  thought.  The  usual  result  fol- 
lows, that  only  in  passages  where  the  author 
loses  hunseK  does  he  effectually  find  himself  — 
does  he  achieve  style  at  all,  that  is.  The  reader 
is  too  seldom  permitted  to  forget  that  the  writer 
is  a  man  of  classical  training,  of  aesthetic  sensi- 
bility, and  of  certain  notions  as  to  the  way  in 
which  such  a  man  ought  to  write.  He  sculls 
two  miles  up  a  river,  and  stops  at  a  farmhouse 
for  luncheon,  whereupon  this  happens :  "  The 
farm  folk  gave  me  a  bowl  of  cream  and  a  golden 
loaf  with  honey ;  then  left  me.  Something  puri- 
tanic in  the  place  —  or  was  it  something  in  the 
air  before  the  cockcrow  of  civihzation?  —  en- 
dowed the  meal  with  a  holy  sweetness  as  of  a 
sacrament."  Passages  like  this  are  a  little  irri- 
tating to  the  hardy  intelligence  ;  it  is  incHned  to 
visualize  the  author  at  the  moment  of  composition 


188  CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY 
not  as  eating  the  food  of  a  hungry  man  in  the 
open  air,  but  as  mincing  about  a  library  at  dusk 
(the  world  well  shut  out),  firing  up  now  and  then 
with  a  sip  of  tea ;  and  as  his  voice  melodiously 
rises  and  falls,  beating  time  delicately  with  a 
sHce  of  buttered  toast. 

That  his  work  is  a  little  absurd  to  the  general 
does  not  matter  if  a  writer  is  reaUy  nothing 
but  a  lover  of  the  coddled  sensation  and  the 
fetched  phrase.  But  there  are  personahties  which 
cannot  be  expressed  in  bare  terms,  and  to  which 
a  simple  style  would  be  an  affectation.  When  the 
fire  of  imagination  fairly  possesses  such  a  writer, 
the  elaboration  of  his  style  ceases  to  appear 
labored.  But  the  manner  which  assumes  force 
and  a  certain  richness  in  moments  of  rhapsody 
is  too  prone,  in  the  expression  of  common  moods, 
to  become  ingenious  and  precious. 

Akin  to  the  fine  work  of  the  dilettante  is  that 
of  the  mystic,  who  obscures  the  obscurity  of  his 
thought  by  apparent  simplicity  of  language ;  and 
that  of  the  symbolist,  whose  most  obvious  claim 
upon  the  attention  is  that  he  may  at  any  time  be 
saying,  if  not  something,  something  else.    "  No 


CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY        189 

one,"  says  a  recent  critic  of  Mr,  W.  B.  Yeats, 
"  would  dare  to  appear  so  meaningless  unless  he 
felt  he  meant  a  gi-eat  deal."  To  the  symbolist 
every  art  is  a  cult,  and  every  artist  a  seer.  His 
danger  lies  in  following  his  theory  of  symbolism, 
rather  than  his  instinct  for  it,  so  that  instead  of 
making  toward  a  free  use  of  symbols,  he  may  be 
really  constructing  a  code  at  once  arbitrary  and 
rigid.  One  is  struck  by  nothing  more,  in  follow- 
ing the  work  of  this  school,  than  by  their  narrow 
range  of  motive.  They  seem  to  prefer  hallucina- 
tion to  fact,  the  sound  of  a  wind  blowing  through 
a  rag  of  tapestry  to  the  human  voice,  fancies  that 
glimmer  and  loom  upon  the  dim  borders  of  the 
mind  to  sound  and  fruitful  imaginations.  It  is 
something,  no  doubt,  that  our  Maeterlincks,  our 
Mallarmes,  our  Yeatses,  at  their  worst,  should 
interpret  for  us  even  the  naked  and  pathetic  futil- 
ities, the  pale  and  disembodied  shadows  of  emo- 
tion, which  haunt  the  background  of  human  con- 
sciousness. But  let  us  admit  cheerfully  that  what 
our  age,  like  other  ages,  has  most  need  of,  and  sets 
most  value  upon,  is  a  vigorous  imaginative  prose 
and  poetry  embodying  human  experience,  not  the 


190        CLEVEILNXSS   AND   ORIGINALITY 

subtle  mysteries  of  an  art  which  prides  itself  upon 
su^rgesting  praeter-human  emotion  by  code. 

We  Americans,  while  we  do  not  demand  that 
quite  everything  be  written  in  dialect,  have  a 
liking  for  English  which  is  not  ashamed  to  own 
kinship  with  the  Temacxilar.  The  cieremess  of 
the  stylist  or  of  the  coterie  has  little  attraction 
and  no  danger  for  xis.  therefore.  According  to 
our  several  degrees,  we  nod  over  our  Paters 
or  wonder  over  our  ]SIaeterlincks.  and  pass  on 
to  matters  which  interest  us. 

We  can.  to  be  sure,  feel  no  perfectly  justifiable 
pride  in  our  alternative  choice,  whether  it  hap- 
I>en5  to  fall  upon  imitative  cleverness  or  •'  freak  " 
cleverness.  Why  should  the  affectations  of  a 
Hewlett  be  creditable  simply  because  of  their 
archaic  flavor?  And  why  should  the  hysterical 
confidences  of  a  morbid  precocity  have,  not  long 
since,  gained  our  serious  attention  simply  because 
they  were  deverly  ''  made  up  "  ?  Heaven  knows, 
that  swaggering  journal  was  pitiful  enough  in 
itself :  let  us  admit  that  those  of  us  upon  whose 
gaping  attention  the  young  egotist  rightly  reck- 
oned became  full  sharers  in  the  pitifulness  of  the 


CLEVERNESS   AND   ORIGINALITY        101 

affair.  Is  this  to  bo  our  conooption  of  originality, 
that  a  man  shall  sav  thiugs  quivrly,  or  a  woman 
say  queer  things?  Surely,  if  the  choosing  of 
bizarre  phnisos,  or  the  employment  of  such  liter- 
ary motifs  as  the  toothbrush,  is  to  be  treated  as 
a  manifestation  of  genius,  the  eritie  cannot  do 
better  tlian  Wtake  himself  once  more  to  the  harm- 
less liiscussion  of  Shakespeare  and  the  nuisical 
glasses. 

Doubtless  this  eager  hearkening  to  the  unusual 
vx")iee  is  due  in  p.art  to  our  determination  to  miss 
nothing  original.  With  an  ear  to  the  wiuil  we 
sh.oll  not  Iv  caught  napping  by  any  eas^ial  unex- 
pecteti  excellence.  Genius  is  .ah\-ays  cxld  :  then^ 
fore  (we  reason^  oiidity  has  a  double  ch.ance  of 
turning  out  to  be  genius.  In  fact,  it  is  one  of  the 
hardest  things  in  the  world  to  distingiiish  Iv- 
tween  inventiveness  and  originality  :  and  one  of 
the  easiest  things  to  confomul  them.  The  dack- 
of-all-ti-ados  is  the  supreme  cudxxlimeut  of  Yan- 
keeism.  A  man  who  can  build  lighthouses,  tell 
stories  to  the  extent  of  twelve  volumes,  paint 
Venetian  water-oolors,  trnd  acct^ptably  lecture  to 
the  "SVom.an's  Club.  apjx\irs   to  us  an  astonish- 


192        CLEVERNESS  AXD   ORIGIXALITY 

ing  fellow ;  and  we  wish  above  all  tilings  to  be 

astonished. 

"We  have  in  America  a  special  susceptibility  to 
any  unusual  sort  of  cleverness,  a  fondness  for 
surprise,  based,  it  may  be,  upon  a  sense  (which 
underlies  our  agreeable  theory  of  his  capability) 
of  the  essential  commonplaceness  of  the  average 
man.  We  like  to  think  of  Lincoln  as  a  rail- 
splitter  whom  Fate,  in  a  spirit  of  bravado,  de- 
puted to  illustrate  the  futility  of  the  old  monarchic 
idea.  We  do  not,  however,  hold  the  theory  that 
every  rail-splitter  possesses  the  genius  which 
clearly  belonged  to  Lincoln  ;  and  we  compromise 
by  dwelling  upon  the  infinite  cleverness  of  the 
man, — a  quality  more  comprehensible  because 
capable  of  development  by  outward  circima- 
stance,  but  a  quality  quite  apart  from  his  genius. 
This  is  not  good  for  us.  We  need  especially  to 
cultivate  the  habit  of  contemplating  the  supreme 
expression  of  personality  in  life  and  art  which 
springs  from  inspiration.  If  that  product  is  not 
to  be  achieved  even  by  means  of  "  an  infinite 
capacity  for  taking  pains,"  it  is  obviously  unat- 
tainable by  any  effort  of  irresponsible  cleverness. 


CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY        193 

If  we  cannot  satisfy  ourselves  with  the  idea  of 
literature  at  its  best  as  a  commodity  produced  by 
conscientious  labor,  it  is  possible  that  we  ought 
not,  either,  to  let  ourselves  look  upon  it  as  a  kind 
of  sublimated  Yankee  notion. 

A  straining  away  from  imitativeness  is  unfor- 
tunately what  many  of  our  younger  writers  are 
now  concerned  with,  as  yoimger  writers  have 
always  been.  They  are  so  much  set  upon  pro- 
ducing the  literature  of  the  future  that  they  fail 
to  produce  the  L'terature  of  the  present,  which  is, 
after  all,  what  we  need  ;  and  which  must  probably 
have  many  qualities  in  common  with  the  litera- 
ture of  the  past.  Their  attempts  are  less  hopeful 
from  the  fact  that  these  enthusiasts  have  a  habit 
of  getting  together.  A  new  note  in  art  is  not 
likely  to  be  invented  by  a  coterie.  TS^e  have  a 
tender  memory  for  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brother- 
hood, but  not  even  their  achievement  has  changed 
the  fact  that  while  seK-admiration  has  produced 
much  of  the  first  order  in  art,  mutual  admiration 
has  produced  nothing.  What  may  be  ordinarily 
expected  of  such  a  class  is  a  more  or  less  labored 
reversion.    The  mode  of  verse  just  now  popular 


194  CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY 
in  America  appears  to  be  of  the  rhapsodic,  dithy- 
rambic  variety,  not  seldom  degenerating  into  a 
sort  of  Grseco-Swinburnian  poetry  of  gesticula- 
tion. Efforts  of  this  sort  recall  irresistibly  the 
remark  of  old  Bentley  to  a  raw  aspirant  for 
Pindaric  honors  numeris  lege  solutis.  "  Pindar 
was  a  bold  fellow,"  said  he,  "  but  thou  art  an 
impudent  one ! " 

In  every  generation  there  is  a  class  of  writers 
which  gains  a  hearing  by  the  sedulous  avoidance 
of  the  expected.  Nothing  is  to  be  managed  quite 
naturally  or  straightforwardly.  Everything  must 
be  original,  that  is,  out  of  the  ordinary,  unex- 
pected, strained  if  necessary,  but  somehow  differ- 
ent. Hence  arises  the  vogue  of  the  writer  whose 
manner  is  full  of  petty  tricks  and  inventions. 
Here  is  an  opportimity  for  masters  of  cheap 
aphorism,  and  for  cool  and  witty  chroniclers  of 
smart  life.  The  jjopularity  of  such  work  may 
remind  us  afi'esh  that  the  greater  public  is  in 
matters  of  taste  perennially  an  undergraduate. 
Even  among  wi'iters  of  true  power  the  tendency 
to  cultivate  catchiness  at  the  expense  of  sound- 
ness  is  not  easy  to    resist.    Mr.   Barrie's   later 


CLEVERNESS   AND   ORIGINALITY        195 

work  has  been  less  fundamentally  shocking  than 
"  Sentimental  Tommy  "  was,  but  in  manner  even 
more  coquettish  and  inconsequent,  full  of  clever- 
ness, and,  by  the  same  token,  a  little  tiresome.  I 
do  not  think  Mr.  Barrie,  except  in  his  Jess 
and  Margaret,  has  given  us  any  distmct  per- 
sonalities. His  studies  are,  in  fact,  in  human 
nature  rather  than  human  character.  He  is  a 
congener  of  Sterne,  without  Sterne's  instinct  for 
concrete  characterization.  Walter  Shandy  and 
Uncle  Toby  find  no  counterpart  in  reality  among 
these  amusing  Tonunies  and  pathetic  Grizels. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  three  modern  Eng- 
lish novelists  from  whom  most  is  now  looked  for 
should  be  ingenious  commentators  rather  than 
creators.  Mr.  Meredith  and  Mr.  James,  as  well 
as  Mr.  Barrie,  sacrifice  much  to  their  cherished 
function  of  interlocutor.  As  pure  fiction  the 
status  of  such  work  is  dubious,  but  we  may  well 
afford  to  have  it  so  —  with  the  compensations. 
These  ingenious,  satirical,  sympathetic,  discursive 
essays,  with  illustrntions,  constitute  an  invaluable 
commentary  upon  contemporary  life.  Only,  there 
is  the  danger,  evident  in  each  of  these  instances, 


196        CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY 

of  too  great  exercise  of  ingenuity,  of  a  growing 
aj)petite  for  subtlety  and  paradox,  wliicli  are  the 
wine  and  caviare  of  the  literary  feast,  and  not  at 
all  good  to  live  on.  For  there  follows  upon  the 
gi-atification  of  this  taste  a  tendency  to  have  re- 
course to  superficial  clevernesses  of  style  which 
should  be  left  to  those  who  have  nothing  better 
to  offer.  Surely,  without  enslaving  ourselves  to 
classical  or  alien  models,  we  cannot  help  feeling 
that  our  strife  should  now  be,  not  toward  an  art 
ornate  and  irregular,  an  art  overborne  and  even 
warped  by  cleverness,  but  toward  an  art  pure 
and  round  and  balanced,  free  from  arbitrary 
mannerism  and  meretricious  embellishment.  By 
extraneous  expedients,  we  now  know,  the  effects 
of  veritable  genius  are  likely  to  be  obscured 
rather  than  enhanced.  Hardly  elsewhere  than  in 
Homer  do  we  see  cleverness  held  firmly  in  its 
proper  place  as  a  confidential  servant  of  Genius. 
Shakespeare  made  a  boon  companion  of  it,  and 
Milton,  not  always  without  awkwardness,  waited 
upon  himself.  Lowell  was  altogether  too  clever 
for  that  best  kind  of  success  which  Hawthorne, 
with  his  utter  lack  of  cleverness,  did  not  fail  to 


CLEVERNESS  AND  ORIGINALITY  197 
attain.  Byrou's  work  now  suffers  from  the  diffi- 
culty of  estimating  its  creative  value  apart  from 
its  cleverness ;  while  the  gold  in  the  poetry  of 
Wordsworth,  who  never  had  a  clever  moment,  is 
easily  freed  from  the  dross. 


THE  WRITING  PUBLIC 


THE   WRITING  PUBLIC 

Not  long  ago  I  took  issue  with  the  phrase 
"reading  public,"  on  the  ground  that  there  is 
little  or  no  solidarity  in  the  body  of  modern  read- 
ers. In  venturing  to  coin  the  phrase  "  writing 
public,"  I  do  not  wish  to  be  considered  either 
whoUy  fancifid  or  whoUy  serious.  It  may  serve 
to  suggest  the  fact  that  the  persons  in  America 
who  make,  or  wish  to  make,  an  important  affair 
of  writing,  now  constitute  a  considerable  class, 
at  least  in  point  of  numbers.  This  class,  like  the 
"  reading  public,"  is  easily  subdivided.  Writing 
may  be,  roughly,  a  trade,  an  avocation,  or  a  pro- 
fession ;  people  as  a  rule  write  for  money,  for  fun, 
or  for  dear  life.  Of  course  one  can  only  suggest 
where  the  balance  of  motive  lies.  The  man  who 
most  of  the  time  writes  for  money,  as  he  would 
make  shoes  or  soap  for  money,  may  have  his 
moments  of  disinterested  desire  for  self-expres- 
sion.  The  ambitious  scribbler  whose  first  object 


202  THE  WRITING  PUBLIC 

is  to  see  himself  in  print  will,  very  likely,  have  a 
sneaking  hope  that  what  he  writes  may  somehow 
turn  out  to  be  of  permanent  value  as  literature. 
Even  the  writer  whose  primary  impulse  is  for  self- 
expression  by  way  of  the  printed  word  will  be  by  no 
means  slow  to  exact  the  last  penny  of  his  market 
value.  Of  course  the  trade  of  writing  is  a  per- 
fectly respectable  one.  Reporters,  spacewriters, 
those  who  compile  useful  books  for  the  market,  all 
have  their  importance  as  public  servants ;  they 
are  not  overpaid,  they  are  not  overpraised.  They 
become  contemptible  only  when  for  the  pocketable 
consideration  they  profane  the  forms  of  literary 
art.  This  is  an  exception  which  perhaps  demands 
to  be  excepted.  I  do  not  speak  of  the  literary  art  as 
a  pretty  ideal  which  a  right-minded  person  must,  as 
he  reads  or  writes,  be  always  remembering  to  think 
of.  It  is,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  a  quite  simple  and 
intelligible  matter,  —  nothing  more  or  less  than 
the  best  mode  of  expression  which,  outside  of  ac- 
tion, human  life  has  hitherto  found.  Two  things 
are  necessary  for  the  literary  artist,  —  and  I  sup- 
pose this  is  true  of  all  other  artists,  —  that  he 
should  know  life  (not  merely  facts),  and  that  he 


THE   WRITING   PUBLIC  203 

should  be  able  to  express  his  knowledge  in  articu- 
late form.  First  of  all,  he  will  be  sincere,  not  only 
in  his  general  desire  to  do  his  best,  but  in  his  im- 
pidse  toward  specific  tasks.  He  will  take  advan- 
tage of  the  best  training  and  opportunity  that 
offer,  but  his  main  function  is  to  exf)ress,  not  his 
training  and  opportunity,  but  liimseK.  He  ex- 
pects a  market,  but  he  ^vrites  for  an  audience 
which  may  be  expressed  in  terms  of  his  own  per- 
sonality. Whenever  the  importance  of  these  mo- 
tives is  reversed  in  his  mind,  he  pretty  surely 
ceases  to  be  an  artist  and  becomes  a  literary  jour- 
neyman. 

All  this  is  a  familiar  enough  —  perhaps  a  too 
familiar  —  fact.  The  instance  of  a  writer  of 
the  professed  literary  class  casting  his  integrity 
and  his  art  to  the  winds  is  as  common,  even,  as 
the  instance  of  a  reporter  or  a  hack  sloughing  off 
his  colorless,  impersonal  habit  and  compassing 
real  success  in  the  field  of  letters.  So  the  trade 
and  the  profession  have  always  played  into  each 
other's  hands.  To  both,  money  is  an  important 
object ;  and  it  seems  that  there  are  certain  super- 
sensitive minds  from  which  not  even  the  use  of 


204  THE   WRITING   PUBLIC 

words  like  "  emolument  "  and  "  honorarium  "  can 
remove  the  sting  of  the  fact.  It  is  doubtless  a 
strain  upon  the  integrity  of  a  worker  in  any 
art  that  he  should  depend  for  subsistence  abso- 
lutely upon  the  proceeds  of  his  labor ;  it  is  also, 
when  the  strain  is  successfully  met,  a  peculiar 
glory. 

There  is,  of  course,  another  class  of  profes- 
sional writers  whose  imjDulse  is  primarily  moral  or 
intellectual  rather  than  aesthetic.  With  this  class 
also  sincerity  is  the  one  thing  needful ;  but  as  it 
is  a  matter  of  mind  and  conscience,  it  can  hardly 
be  put  upon  a  plane  with  that  integrity  of  the 
whole  personality  —  of  intellect  plus  charac- 
ter —  which  is  essential  to  the  creative  artist. 
Whether  its  immediate  field  lies  in  ethics,  or  poli- 
tics, or  sociology,  or  religion,  or  philosophy,  such 
work  is  obviously  enough  distinguished  from  the 
product  of  "  mere  literature."  Of  didactic  or 
scientific  writers  we  have,  at  all  events,  nothing  to 
say  here  ;  we  have  a  little  to  say  of  that  less 
commonly  understood  class  which,  by  way  of 
avocation,  attempts,  more  or  less  successfully,  to 
make  headway  in  the  literary  art. 


THE  WRITING  PUBLIC  205 

One  of  its  most  productive  constituencies  is  of 
the  academic  way  of  life.  A  surprisingly  larg-e 
proportion  of  American  writers  do  their  work  in 
the  collegiate  atmosphere.  Their  danger  is  not 
that  of  the  professional  author ;  they  have  little 
excuse  for  hasty  or  venal  work.  They  are  able 
to  wait  for  inspiration.  They  live  in  a  sort  of 
busy  retirement  which  one  would  think  singularly 
likely  to  foster  creative  production.  But  there 
are  the  usual  drawbacks.  If  these  persons  are 
faithful,  they  must  fight  against  absorption  in 
matters  of  petty  routine  and  discipline  ;  in  any 
case  they  have  to  guard  against  a  gradual  nar- 
rowing of  the  horizon  which  in  the  end  shuts 
them  out  from  large  work  of  any  kind.  When  it 
comes  to  the  practice  of  the  literary  art,  there 
are  two  principal  tendencies  which  they  have  to 
combat :  the  first,  a  tendency  to  a  wooden  and 
meanly  academic  method ;  the  second,  to  over- 
assertiveness,  not  to  say  bumptiousness, — due,  not 
to  a  consciousness  of  achievement  which  has  been 
tested  in  the  world  of  men,  but  to  a  habit  of 
small  authority  over  official  inferiors.  There  is, 
for  better  or  worse,  a  public  which  is  willing  to 


206  THE   WRITING  PUBLIC 

adopt  the  classroom  attitude  towards  anybody 
who  protests  sufficiently.  Otherwise  the  literary 
amateurism  of  professional  teachers  is  not  un- 
likely to  swing  over  into  dilettantism.  To  be 
pedagogically  didactic,  or  to  be  precious,  these  are 
the  two  horns  of  the  dilenuna.  Both  have  been 
avoided  in  many  instances ;  I  am  only  suggesting 
that  the  cloistered  amateur  does  not  have  every- 
thing his  own  way. 

Nor  does  the  successful  man  of  affairs.  The 
most  generally  known  American  instance,  prob- 
ably, is  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  long  (though 
not  too  delicately)  hailed  as  "the  poet-banker," 
or  "the  banker-poet."  He  has  done  admirable 
work,  but  he  would  not  seem,  by  his  own  testi- 
mony, to  have  labored  under  the  happiest  condi- 
tions :  "As  a  rule,"  he  said,  some  years  ago, 
"  distrust  the  quality  of  that  product  which  is  not 
the  result  of  professional  labor.  .  .  .  Generally, 
I  say,  distrust  writers  who  come  not  in  by  the 
strait  gate,  but  clamber  over  the  wall  of  ama- 
teurship."  This  is  a  suggestive  passage,  worth 
reflecting  upon  for  its  application  to  American 
letters.    It  is  not  easily  seen  to  apply  at  all,  un- 


THE   WRITING   PUBLIC  207 

less  in  some  unflattering  negative  sense.  One  does 
not  recall  a  single  American  writer  of  the  first 
note  who  from  first  to  last  depended  consistently 
upon  the  product  of  his  art  for  subsistence.  Such 
of  them  as  did  not  find  a  safe  harbor  in  the  prac- 
tice of  one  of  the  learned  professions  were  fain  to 
depend  at  times  upon  journalism,  or,  more  com- 
fortably, upon  diplomacy.  Most  of  them  were, 
according  to  Mr.  Stedman's  criterion,  hardly  more 
than  gifted  amateurs.  To  me  it  seems  fairly  clear 
that  a  distinction  between  amateur  and  profes- 
sional based  upon  the  question  of  subsistence  is 
not  altogether  adequate.  That  a  writer  should 
prepare  himself,  that  he  should  do  his  best  —  these 
are  the  main  things.  It  is  impossible  for  some 
men  to  do  their  best  under  a  spur  of  pecuniary 
necessity.  It  is  impossible  for  others  to  do  their 
best  without  it.  LoweU  was  essentially  an  amor 
teur,  not  because  he  made  a  living  by  teaching  or 
in  diplomacy,  but  because  he  did  not  feel  it  worth 
while  to  take  the  pains  to  be  an  artist.  It  is  un- 
necessary to  regi'et  the  fact  that  he  was  not  thrown 
upon  Grub  Street ;  for  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
doubt  that  his  temperament  would  have  led  him 


208  THE   WRITING   PUBLIC 

to  seek  the  easy  levels  of  journalism  rather  than 

to  make  a  determined  assault  on  the  heights  of 

Parnassus. 

Literature  is  not  merely  a  process  or  an  ideal, 
it  is  a  fact ;  but  it  is  very  different  from  the  fact 
of  journalism.  The  one  (as  we  have  already  had 
occasion  to  note  more  than  once)  is  the  embodi- 
ment or  interpretation  of  human  experience,  the 
other  is  a  record  of  or  coumientary  upon  human 
episodes  and  conditions.  The  one  is  personal,  the 
other  impersonal.  When  the  journalist  produces 
literature,  as  he  not  uncommonly  does,  he  becomes 
an  artist  for  the  nonce ;  and  the  process  is  quite 
as  often  reversed.  There  are  few  men  of  letters 
who  do  not,  on  occasion,  make  contributions  to 
journalism.  These  interchanges  do  not  affect  the 
distinction  ;  literature  remains  an  art  and  journal- 
ism a  useful  employment.  They  do  perhaps  tend 
to  increase  the  existing  confusion  in  the  general 
mind  as  to  what  constitutes  literature.  They  do 
perhaps  hel})  to  accoimt  for  the  evident  and  some- 
what disconcerting  recent  growth  of  the  most  ex- 
ceptionable of  our  writing  constituencies. 

This  is  a  class  which  joyfully  regards  literature 


THE  WRITING   PUBLIC  209 

as  a  trick  upon  which  anybody  may  have  the 
luck  to  stumble ;  otherwise  its  members  have 
perhajDS  little  in  coimnon.  It  includes  earnest 
young  persons  who  wish  to  make  literature  a 
means  of  escape  from  behind  the  counter,  as  a 
safer  mode  of  gambling  than  playing  the  market 
with  the  contents  of  one's  employer's  till.  They 
go  in  for  aU  the  prize  short-story  competitions ; 
they  wi-ite  millions  of  bad  verses  which  they  have 
no  possible  means  of  knowing  to  be  bad  ;  above 
all,  they  write  novels  and  romances,  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  publisher's  reader  more  than  of  the 
public,  no  doubt.  Another  type  is  that  of  the 
stupid  rich  person  who  looks  for  fame  as  another 
world  to  conquer,  and  who  does  not  disdain  a 
little  superlative  pocket-money  by  the  way.  There 
are  numerous  other  pretty  clearly  defined  species 
of  this  dabbling  genus  ;  we  need  not  enumerate 
them.  They  have  no  lack  of  zeal,  but  they  have 
a  common  lack  of  integrity. 

I  suppose  it  is  not  necessary  for  anybody  to 
become  enraged  over  this  situation,  but  I  doubt 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  persons  of  taste  ought  to  be 
merely  amused  at  it.    Reviewers  and  editors  too 


210  THE    WRITING   PUBLIC 

often  seem  cheerfully  indifferent  to  integrity 
of  motive  ;  it  is  enough  if  the  given  product  is 
amusing.  Fiction  especially  they  are  ready  to 
take  pretty  much  at  its  own  valuation ;  yet 
there  is  no  literary  form  which  now  offers  less 
encouragement  to  the  dabbling  hand.  What  pos- 
sible excuse  can  anybody  have  to-day  for  sitting 
down  in  cold  blood  to  concoct  a  fresh  novel  for 
pay  ?  Surely,  we  are  well-found  in  that  commod- 
ity. There  are  plenty  -of  people  writing  stories 
because  they  are  fitted  by  nature  and  training  for 
just  that  kind  of  work.  Yet  a  publisher  recently 
announced  that  within  a  comparatively  short  time 
he  had  been  called  upon  to  consider  something 
like  a  hundred  and  fifty  novels  before  he  found 
one  fit  to  publish.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that 
many  of  them  were  the  outcome  of  a  natural  im- 
pulse toward  fiction.  The  gross  royalty-seeker 
would  be  largely  represented  in  the  number  ;  the 
man  of  all-round  literary  facility,  who  has  come  at 
last  to  fiction  because  he  finds  little  market  for 
anything  else,  would  be  responsible  for  a  few 
attempts ;  but  the  greater  proportion  would  be 
laid  to  the  account  of  the  amateur  dabbler. 


THE  WRITING  PUBLIC  211 

One  can  but  note  with  consternation  how  prom- 
inent this  person  has  become  of  late.  Collectively 
his  name  is  legion  and  his  activity  incredible  ;  in- 
dividually he  has  scored  some  extraordinary  com- 
mercial successes  in  fiction.  Several  of  his  books 
have  "  sold  "  by  the  hundred  thousand  —  a  fact 
which  has  doubtless  contributed  to  the  increase 
and  multiplication  of  his  kind.  He  has  become 
a  phenomenon  to  be  reckoned  with.  Nobody 
grudges  him  his  fun  or  his  dollars  ;  but  it  is 
unreasonable  that  he  and  his  public  should  be 
encouraged  to  take  themselves  over-seriously.  Yet 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  matter  now  printed  for  his 
support  and  edification.  An  odd  manifestation 
connected  with  the  growth  of  periodical  literature 
in  America  during  the  past  decade  is  the  book- 
gossiping  magazine  which,  with  much  flourishing 
of  literary  graces,  has  to  do  with  little  besides 
the  novels  and  the  novel-writers  of  the  hour.  A 
glance  at  any  such  publication  is  enough  to  show 
how  directly  it  caters  to  the  dabbling  amateur. 
All  sorts  of  specifics  are  unblushingly  recom- 
mended, by  the  use  of  which  any  young  person 
of  inteUigence  and    good  character    may  attain 


212  THE   WRITING  PUBLIC 

fame  and  fortune.  "  The  Author  to  the  Pub- 
lisher," "  How  to  Write  Poetry,"  "  The  Literaiy 
Market,"  "  A  Pull  with  the  Editor,"  "  Current 
Prices  for  Verse," — here  are  a  few  titles  of 
articles  which  have  recently  appeared  in  these 
publications. 

Of  course  some  part  of  the  "  reading  public  " 
may  be  understood  to  derive  amusement  from  such 
printed  matter.  Even  those  who  do  not  strictly 
meditate  the  thankless  Muse  may  take  a  more  or 
less  legitimate  interest  in  her  private  affairs.  But 
it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  main  object  of  such 
articles  is  to  play  upon  the  raw  susceptibilities  of 
the  person  who  "  writes  a  little."  This  is  also  the 
object  of  the  "  personal  "  items,  which  furnish 
forth  many  columns  in  this  type  of  journal.  The 
"Litterateur,"  for  example,  devotes  a  column  to 
the  career  of  John  Smith  ;  perhaps  it  gives  a  half- 
tone print  of  himself  and  infants.  Mr.  Smith's 
exploits,  before  he  produced  that  masterpiece  of 
the  year,  "  The  Gates  of  Gaza,"  were,  it  appears, 
quite  commonplace.  So  much  the  better.  He  is  a 
little  out  of  the  ruck  and  we  are  not ;  never  mind, 
he  leads  by  only  haK  a  length  :  watch  us  on  the 


THE   WRITING  PUBLIC  213 

next  lap.  The  advertising  columns  have  some- 
thing for  us,  too ;  here  are  "  critical  agencies,"  and 
"  literary  bureaus,"  which  eugaguigly  offer  (for  a 
nominal  fee)  to  criticise,  revise,  even  sell,  our  man- 
uscripts for  us.   Why  not,  then,  be  an  author  ? 

All  this  is  instructive  as  well  as  amusing.  It 
helps  explain  the  overwhelming  flux  of  mediocre 
manuscripts  which  the  day's  mail  brings  to  every 
editorial  desk.  If  one  could  attribute  all  this  effort 
to  a  growing  seriousness  toward  literature  on  the 
part  of  cultivated  persons,  or  even  on  the  part 
of  uncultivated  persons  !  Unfortunately,  it  seems 
rather  to  signify  the  increase  in  America  of  a 
cacoethes  scrihendi  of  a  somewhat  paltry  sort.  Too 
many  persons  among  us,  surely,  have  a  notion 
that  hterary  achievement  is  an  accident  which  may 
fall  to  the  lot  of  any  worthy  citizen.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  amateur  writer  has  his  place  in  the 
economy  of  literature.  But  he  ceases  to  dabble  be- 
fore he  begins  to  succeed,  if  success  is  measured  by 
anything  less  ponderable  than  dollars  and  cents. 
Least  of  all  does  he  deserve,  m  the  raw  state,  to  be 
coddled  by  writers  whose  creative  work  or  whose 
criticism  is  based  upon  sound  standards  of  value. 


REVIEWER   AND   CRITIC 


REVIEWER  AND  CRITIC 

"  A  MAXIM  which  it  would  be  weU  for  ambi- 
tious critics  to  chalk  up  on  the  walls  of  their 
workshops  is  this  :  Never  mind  whom  you  praise, 
but  be  very  careful  whom  you  blame."  So  wrote 
Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  some  years  ago.  There  is  no 
such  partial  legend  to  be  seen,  one  may  fairly 
guess,  upon  his  own  walls.  His  was  an  ironical 
caution  addressed  to  persons  who  have  the  temer- 
ity to  say  what  they  think  of  new  books.  He 
had,  to  be  sure,  certain  special  instances  in  mind, 
for  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  Win  Stanley,  and  Den- 
nis, and  Jeffrey,  aU  acute  and  as  far  as  they  knew 
impartial  critics,  each  damned  to  posterity  by  a 
single  gross  error  of  judgment. 

No  doubt  the  happiest  field  of  criticism  lies 
outside  of  contemporary  literature.  Nisi  honum, 
is  a  rule  of  criticism  more  rigidly  applied  to  the 
living  than  to  the  dead.  There  is  nothing  action- 
able in  a  sneer  at  Shakespeare  or  an  assault  upon 


218  REVIEWER  AND  CRITIC 

Pope ;  but  the  truth  about  Smith  (who  married 
one's  second  cousin)  or  Jones  (who  is  a  cidt  in 
Hoboken)  is  not  to  be  uttered.  Of  course  I  mean 
the  critic's  notion  of  the  truth,  for  that  is  the 
only  truth  he  has  any  concern  with.  It  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  his  conception  of  the  truth 
about  contemporary  work  will  lack  certain  safe- 
guards which  time  supplies  for  other  judgments. 
The  difficulties  of  his  position  are  many  and  seri- 
ous enough  to  have  led  so  acute  a  critic  as  Mr. 
Jules  Lemaitre  to  announce  that  "  the  criticism 
of  our  contemporaries  is  not  really  criticism,  but 
simply  conversation  ;  "  a  dictum  so  comprehensive 
that  it  seems  to  asperse  the  value  of  any  kind  of 
individual  judgment.  We  cannot  wait  for  the 
opinion  of  posterity  upon  the  character  of  our 
next-door  neighbors ;  nor  will  it  necessarily  be 
true  that  our  expressed  opinion  of  them  is  nothing 
more  than  gossip,  though  the  chance  may  lie  that 
way. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  reviewer  to  express 
his  opinion  of  next-door  literature.  His  duty, 
like  that  of  any  other  critic,  is  to  see  as  clearly 
as  he  can,  and  to  tell  precisely  what  he  sees.    He 


REVIEWER  AND  CRITIC  219 

had  better  not  be  thinking  much  about  his  liabil- 
ity to  error ;  it  is  enough  to  do  as  well  as  he  can. 
Mr.  Gosse's  remark  is  interesting  for  its  implica- 
tion that  reviewing  is  criticism  of  a  sort.  Kope- 
walking  is  a  precarious  business,  but  it  is  one 
way,  after  all,  of  getting  across  the  gaj).  The 
reviewer's  tumbles  into  the  net  of  fancifulness 
or  the  abyss  of  commonplace  are  frequent  and 
ludicrous  enough,  but  it  must  be  admitted 
that  he  accomplishes  the  real  feat  surprisingly 
often. 

I  have  ventured  to  suggest  that  the  only  truth 
a  critic  has  to  do  with  is  the  truth  as  he  sees  it. 
I  do  not  mean  that  his  judgments  ought  to  be 
based  upon  mere  whim  or  prejudice ;  if  they  are, 
he  is  not  a  critic  at  all,  in  any  serious  sense.  For 
criticism,  as  Arnold  said,  "is  the  art  of  seeing 
the  object  as  in  itself  it  really  is ;  "  and  the  critic 
is  of  value  in  proportion  as  his  vision  approximates 
perfection.  The  great  critic  is  born  and  made. 
His  naturally  keen  vision  is  refined,  before  it 
reaches  its  highest  power,  by  every  contact :  by 
contact  with  life ;  with  literature  ;  finally,  with 
the  classics  of  criticism.    At  the  end  of  all  this,  it 


220  REVIEWER  AND   CRITIC 

remains  for  him  only  to  tell  what,  as  the  result  of 
his  being  and  knowing,  he  does  actually  see.  The 
honest  expression  of  a  firm  and  reasonable  opinion 
—  this  is  the  object  which  a  critic  has  before 
him ;  his  rank  depends  upon  the  plane  of  reason 
in  which  his  judgments  are  formed.  Shiftlessness 
of  opinion  and  insincerity  of  expression  are  the 
only  crimes  which  can  be  charged  against  a  re- 
viewer ;  his  other  errors  will  be  due  to  limitations 
which  he  cannot  remove. 

Moreover,  personality  as  well  as  intellect  con- 
tributes to  the  effectiveness  of  the  critic.  True 
criticism,  we  have  begun  to  see  of  late,  is  as  much 
a  means  of  self-expression  as  any  of  the  forms 
which  are  commonly  called  creative.  The  fact 
has  been  most  strikingly  suggested  by  M.  Ana- 
tole  France  in  his  definition  of  criticism  as  "  the 
adventures  of  a  soul  among  masterpieces."  This 
suggests  the  chief  point  of  disadvantage  for  the 
critic  of  the  contemporary,  or  reviewer.  His  ad- 
ventures must  often  be  upon  a  lower,  at  least  a 
more  dubious  level.  His  function  cannot  be  agree- 
ably limited  to  the  walled  gardens  of  literature ; 
and  he  will  not  find  masterpieces  bursting  from 


REVIEWER   AND   CRITIC  221 

every  hedgerow.  He  is  definitely  committed  to  a 
contest  of  research  of  which  the  notable  prizes 
must  be  few.  He  must  travel  in  all  places  and  in 
all  companies.  He  cannot,  as  Ruskin  advised,  keep 
out  of  the  salt  swamps  of  literature,  and  live  on 
a  little  rocky  island  ;  or,  as  Schopenhauer  urged, 
devote  his  time  for  reading  "  exclusively  to  those 
great  minds  of  all  times  and  all  countries  who 
overtop  the  rest  of  humanity,  those  whom  the 
voice  of  fame  points  to  as  such."  He  is,  in  fact, 
a  drudge  of  fame.  His  reward  is,  now  and  then, 
to  hit  upon  merit,  to  hit  upon  truth,  to  feel  him- 
self not  only  the  drudge  of  fame,  but  the  herald  of 
excellence.  At  such  moments  he  has  nothing  to 
ask  of  fate ;  the  world  is  his,  and  the  fullness 
thereof. 

But  why  all  this  stress  upon  honesty  ?  Is  there 
any  reason  for  a  reviewer's  being  anything  but 
honest  ?  There  are  many  reasons  — more  perhaps 
in  America  than  elsewhere.  England  still  preserves 
a  taste  for  robust  criticism.  It  rather  likes  the 
battering  method  ;  it  does  not  grudge  the  "  Sat- 
urday Review  "  its  fun.  One  .can  perceive  a  the- 
ory behind  this  method,  to  the  effect  that  if  a 


222  REVIEWER   AND   CRITIC 

reviewer  (who  is  free  to  write  or  not)  cannot 
find  a  book  good  enough  to  write  about,  the  next 
best  thing  is  to  find  one  bad  enough.  Either  will 
give  him  opportunity  to  enunciate,  or  to  illustrate, 
some  critical  principle.  This  is  not  the  American 
theory.  We  are  given  to  understand  that  a  re- 
viewer should  ignore  what  he  cannot  praise.  It 
is  his  duty  to  speak  only  of  books  about  which  he 
can  find  something  amiable  to  say.  He  is  to  be 
a  guide,  but  not  a  guardian,  of  the  public.  Un- 
fortunately, the  ordinary  reviewer  has  obvious 
reasons  for  speaking  of  books  in  which  no  culti- 
vated taste  can  find  occasion  for  praise ;  and  he 
is  too  likely  to  succumb  to  the  general  demand 
for  amenity. 

But  let  us  consider  the  extraordinary  reviewer, 
the  writer  who  is  free  to  treat  only  such  books  as 
commend  themselves  to  his  taste.  Is  he  altogether 
absolved  from  the  duty  of  warning  his  audience 
against  meretricious  work  upon  which  the  per- 
functory reviewer  is  pronoimcing  siUy  encomiums  ? 
It  is  quite  true  that  the  best  service  of  criticism  is 
affirmative.  We  are  in  no  danger  of  underrating 
the  value  of  Professor  Dowden's  assertion  that 


REVIEWER  AND   CRITIC  223 

"  The  most  valuable  critic  is  the  critic  who  com- 
municates symjjathy  by  an  exquisite  record  of  his 
own  delights."  The  purest  pleasure,  the  highest 
profit,  lies  in  constructive  work ;  nobody  covets 
the  office  of  literary  headsman.  Yet  it  is  a  neces- 
sary office,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  the  reviewer 
should  feel  himseK  culpable  in  occasionally  under- 
taking it.  He  is  not  so  fatuous  as  to  imagine  that 
his  comment  upon  a  book  will  have  a  mysterious 
power  of  adding  to  or  subtracting  from  its  value. 
We  do  not  fancy  that  the  merit  of  a  sunset  is 
determined  by  the  approbation  of  a  tourist,  or  the 
no  merit  of  a  thunderstorm  by  the  whimpering  of 
an  old  lady  imder  a  bed.  The  immediate  circula- 
tion of  a  book  may  conceivably  be  affected  by  some- 
body's opinion  of  it ;  its  quality,  and  consequently 
its  permanent  standing,  can  be  in  no  way  affected. 
Works  of  merit  do  not  always  speak  for  them- 
selves at  once  ;  works  of  no  merit  very  commonly 
speak  beyond  themselves.  It  is  for  the  reviewer 
to  offer  some  intelligible  surmise  as  to  the  value 
of  one  as  well  as  of  the  other. 

The  especial  temptation  of  the  American  re- 
viewer is  to  concern  himself  more  with  persons 


224  REVIEWER  AND  CRITIC 

and  with  volumes  of  printed  matter  than  with 
qualities  and  principles.  He  thinks  of  the  author, 
he  thinks  of  the  publisher,  he  thinks  of  the  pub- 
lic —  they  aU  like  to  hear  pleasant  things  said. 
He  says  them. 

One  is  reminded  of  Borrow's  experience  of  the 
trade  as  reported  in  "  Lavengro  :  "  "  If  I  am 
asked  how  I  comported  myself,  under  all  circum- 
stances, as  a  reviewer,  I  answer, —  I  did  not 
forget  that  I  was  connected  with  a  review  estab- 
lished on  Oxford  principles,  the  editor  of  which 
had  translated  Quintilian.  All  the  publications 
which  fell  under  my  notice  I  treated  with  a  gen- 
tlemanly and  Oxford-like  manner,  no  personali- 
ties, —  no  vituperation,  —  no  shabby  Insinuations  ; 
decorum,  decorum  was  the  order  of  the  day. 
Occasionally  a  word  of  admonition,  but  gently 
expressed,  as  an  Oxford  undergraduate  might 
have  expressed  it,  or  master  of  arts."  This  is  ob- 
viously not  a  method  of  criticism  ;  not  a  respect- 
ful method  of  approaching  an  author  or  his  work. 
An  ingenious  argument  is  sometimes  advanced  in 
favor  of  it,  based  upon  the  theory  that  the  duty 
of  a  reviewer  Is  not  only  to  judge  literature,  but 


REVIEWER  AND  CRITIC  225 

to  encourage  writers.  We  must  have  no  more 
instances  like  that  of  poor  young-  Keats.  This 
theory  of  the  reviewer's  function  seems  to  me 
utterly  false.  It  is  his  business  to  express  his 
opinion  of  the  distinct  value  of  a  book  as  lit- 
erature ;  it  is  the  publisher's  business  to  express 
his  opinion  of  its  concrete  value  as  a  commodity. 
If  it  falls  to  anybody  to  encourage,  to  deprecate, 
to  distinguish  between  promise  and  achievement, 
it  is  the  editor.  Every  good  editor  brings  out 
much  new  material  by  this  kind  of  semi-official 
manipulation.  But  the  critic  is  under  obligation 
only  to  the  truth  as  he  sees  it.  The  moment  he 
begins  to  falter,  to  qualify,  to  mitigate  the  sub- 
stance of  his  criticism,  he  makes  it  worthless.  To 
its  form  he  may  well  give  the  gTcatest  possible 
amenity. 

These  principles  cannot  be  too  strictly  kept  in 
mind  by  the  reviewer  whose  critical  integrity 
finds  itself  wavering  under,  it  may  be,  the  four- 
fold pressure  of  author,  editor,  publisher,  and 
public.  He  is  a  judge,  or  he  is  a  mere  fabricator 
of  book  notices.  It  is  not  his  business  to  help 
the  sale  of  books,  or  to  coddle  sensitive  writers. 


226  REVIEWER  AND  CRITIC 

or  to  make  everybody  feel  comfortable  about 
everything ;  discrimination  is  always  offensive  in 
one  quarter  or  another ;  and  the  reviewer,  like 
other  critics,  discriminates,  or  is  lost. 


(^^ 


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